MBA 734 – Blogging at DrKW Discussion Question & EconTalk

What are the advantages and disadvantages of implementing internal versus external employee blogs in a corporate setting?  Are there certain industries where one of these strategies makes more sense?

A side note.  Since we’re starting our module on the social web and will be talking about Wikipedia in a couple of weeks I highly recommend listening to a couple of interesting and relevant podcasts from EconTalk, a great and well-recognized podcast about important issues and ideas in economics hosted by GMU economics professor Russ Roberts.  You don’t need an iPod or iTunes to listen to these podcasts; you can stream them directly from the EconTalk website.

The first podcast is with Clay Shirky who is the author of Here Comes Everybody and an expert on the economics of social media.

The second podcast is with Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, who discusses how Wikipedia started, how some of the social aspects of Wikipedia work, and where Wikipedia is heading.

MBA 734 – ezboard Discussion Questions

MBA 734 students, please address the following questions in a blog post before the start of next week’s class.  Thanks!

1. How should ezboard update their business model to reach their revenue goals?

2. What services should they consider offering with the new Version 8.0 software?

Blogging Tools for MBA 734

For my MBA 734 students, and anyone else interested, here is a list of blogging tools to choose from for your class blog.  I’ve divided the list into two categories: developer hosted blogging sites and software for hosting your own blog.  The advantages and disadvantages of these two options should be pretty clear.  Developer hosted blogging sites let you create a blog on their server and are extremely easy to setup and manage.  The trade off is you don’t have as much control over the design and features of the blog.  Using content management software to host your own blog will take time and effort to set up and maintain, but will give you the most control.  I recommend a developer hosted blog if you are new to blogging or don’t have much technical experience with setting up software on a web host.  If you are looking for the experience of managing and hosting your own blog, try out the content management software.

Developer Hosted Blogging Sites:

• WordPress.com (free and what I’m using here)
• Blogger.com (also free and owned by Google)
• LiveJournal (free)
• Vox.com (free)
• TypePad (subscription fee required)
• Windows Live Spaces (free)