The Sun Bloggers have one more blog: Jonathan Schwartz, President and Chief Operating Officer of Sun Microsystems is starting his own blog as reported by CorporateBloggingBlog.

BusinessPundit reports about a good story in BusinessWeek on blogging at work - with the boss’s blessing.

Steve Rubel reports on an article in BusinessWeek about corporate blogging. Available online to magazine subscribers only but you can read a few excerpts on Steve’s post.

Phil Libin, president of CoreStreet, Ltd., a Cambridge, MA company specializing in validation for large scale electronic credentials systems, explains on MarketingSherpa.com how he was convinced by one of his employees to launch his own blog, Vastly Important Notes, in January 2004, and how it turned into a bigger success than anyone expected.

Ross Mayfield gives quite a pessimistic view on The State of Email but there are some alternatives.

“… email wasn’t designed, for its present scale, costs or applications, and its best use is for one-to-one communication.”

“You have heard the stats before, email volume is growing at 40% per year, spam at 65%.”

“RSS, Atom, Blogs, Wikis and Workspaces represent a Pull Model model of attention management that lets users control what the subscribe to AND when they want to receive it. Email, by contrast, centers on an Inbox beyond your control. Once someone has your address, at least your gateway will be bombarded.”

Question: I have an e-mail newsletter and I’m considering starting a blog. What content is appropriate for each? The expert’s answer is on BtoB Newsletters.

Blogs are a great advertising environment. Discover why on PR Machine.

internetnews.com gives some good advice for business blogging newbies.

“The challenge for companies mulling how to use the growth of Weblogs to their advantage is to first create one that people want to read.”

“If you sound like a marketing blog, people won’t read it.”

Yahoo News reports about a WordBiz survey where 63.8% of the marketers see blogging as more than just a current fad. The survey responses revealed that blogging may be the answer to the prayers of these professionals. 51.6% of participants admitted that the time and resources involved in publishing an e-newsletter were their most formidable obstacles in communicating online to their customers and prospects. Another 20% blamed spam filters for their communication woes. Since blogs are published easily and instantaneously, and since they are not delivered via email, blogging may be the silver bullet for both of these groups.

Via Micro Persuasion: Microsoft’s Heather Leigh thinks corporate blogging should be a job skill.

Dana VanDen Heuvel adds two important required skills to those proposed by Heather:

• An open mind - You have to be able to see a topic from multiple frames of reference and be open to ideas that are from other ‘paradigms.’
• A willingness to share - Blogging involves giving to get. If you’re not ready to share information and ideas, you’re really not adding any value out here.

Before the development of weblogs, “online community” tools like forums, mailing lists and bulletin boards were predominantly used for community building. Experience seems to show that weblogs are proving far more effective in creating meaningful interpersonal connections than centralized community spaces on the web. Can networks of bloggers be seen as the future of online communities? Read the full post which answers three basic questions:

• What weblogs provide that other web-based collaboration tools do not?
• What Communities of Practice provide that a network of bloggers cannot?
• How weblogs and CoPs live together?

On Really Simple Syndication, Dave Winer responds to a correspondent’s question: would a big media company lose traffic if they supported RSS?

Alex Barnett suggests to move the debate away from RSS vs e-mail and see how RSS can become part of the marketing mix. He summarizes positive and negative points about e-mail and RSS, both in a customer and e-mail marketer perspective.

Dana Blankenhorn explains why every site ought to be a blog.

“What people most want in pages they bookmark is dynamic content. They want to know that each time they hit the page there will be something new to see. Blogging software enables just that.”

As reported by ITworld.com Sun has introduced free-for-all employee blogging at blogs.sun.com. Sun executives drafted a new “Policy on Public Discourse” and the director of Internet services set up a server to host the blogs.sun.com site, which is Sun’s unfiltered public face to the outside world.

“As of now, you are encouraged to tell the world about your work, without asking permission first,” states the policy. To date, approximately 40 bloggers have signed up for blogs.sun.com. While the extent of its blogging project may be novel, Sun isn’t the first company to try such an experiment. In January, Microsoft Corp. began publishing employee blogs on its Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Web site. Surprisingly, the phenomenon of corporate blogging starts with the big players whereas smaller companies could implement the same type of blogs faster and with less constraints.

Read the full story on ITworld.com.

Blog Business World reports: business blogs are blooming.

Debbie Weil wrote a short article with 3 good reasons why a blog can extend the reach of your e-newsletter:

1. A blog hasn’t to vie for attention amongst dozens or even hundreds of new messages.
2. A blog is an instant publishing tool.
3. A blog makes your site search engine friendly.

Steve Rubel explains how to use blogs vs press releases as a news distribution channel.