MODERATOR PAUL RAND: There are a couple of themes that are running through these questions. Is blogging a fad, and will we be back here a year from now talking about some of the issues?

STEPHEN BAKER: Yes, it is a fad, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to die away. Whenever people have the technology and the ability to communicate broadly with other people, they’re going to take advantage of that. Five years from now, we may not be talking about blogs. Maybe we will have moved on to something else. Maybe there will be many, many different categories of citizen-generated or consumer-generated media, but I think it will continue and just grow.

DAVID WEICK: It is a change. It could be a fad. But I don’t think it will go away. It may evolve. One of the most thrilling things we have been able to do with technology and communications is to democratize and open doors. This is opening up another set of doors in a different way, and I think it will evolve more than anything else.

CAROLE BROWN: I’m not a blog expert. I think the notion of communication and transparency isn’t a fad. People will begin to expect this open communication, whether you call it a blog or not.

RAND: How do you deal with negative postings, with people out there trying to get you down?

BROWN: The really vulgar entries that come onto the blog I delete. But just the negative I use as a learning process. Don’t be afraid of the negative because it helps you improve your business.

JON IWATA: You have to have a thick skin about it. Beyond that, being outraged and offended, the different thing is do you care. Often I hear from people within IBM who say, “Who are these people?” “And who cares what they say?” “They’re not the press, they’re not any significant analyst, they’re not influential.” You get over that pretty quickly.

As to the outrageous things they say about your company, externally, what do you do about that? Which gets to the [IBM] guidelines a little bit. The starting point is because the blogosphere is just another place where dialogues happen and ideas are shared and shaped, and opinions are formulated, that’s what it is. Then we should be a part of it. And because of that, everybody in the company is encouraged to do that, to engage with the blogosphere. It’s a remarkable thing, actually, for a large company to do this.

There have been instances that have come up where people have said things that were pretty offensive. If they happen internally and they violate business practices in general, there are ramifications to that. Externally, it’s a question of how you respond. Our view is if a blogger out there says something damaging to IBM, our position is to have an official of the company, a media representative, essentially write a letter to the editor, to straighten this person out. That’s because that’s what we’re used to. Our view is we’ll do that but let’s equip hundreds of thousands of employees with the facts and if they want to, they can go post the truth. So you have one official IBM response and perhaps dozens, hundreds, thousands of people who are informed.

RAND: That’s a very progressive attitude. We don’t see that in a lot of places. Lots of companies don’t respond. Steve, you’re probably well familiar with the Jeff Jarvis case around Dell. Would you mind articulating that? I think there are some downsides to not responding to negative voices in the blogosphere and companies experience backlash for not doing so.

BAKER: Jeff Jarvis is a very prominent Internet blogger ( http://www.buzzmachine.com/), and he blogs about practically everything he’s thinking about. Blogs copiously. He had a bad experience with Dell with a computer and calling up the help line. And so he blogged about it and he did not get a good response. And so he blogged and blogged and blogged some more. It became of enormous discussion within the blog world. Dell finally fessed to it. But if they had been paying attention to it early on, they could have avoided a big public relations nightmare.

RAND: How do you deal with people who are not following the blog policy?

WEICK: We don’t have a specific, well-articulated policy on blogging, so we do more self-policing. Obviously, we have a communications and electronic communications policy in place, but that’s more about external communications. Obviously, we have the mechanisms available that if someone said something truly offensive, we could eliminate it from the blog. But that would be about the only case where I think we would take action.

BAKER: Just one thing about people saying negative things about the company. Whenever someone blogs something negative about BusinessWeek, I think it’s a great opportunity to highlight it and say, “Here’s a beef people are saying about us. What do you think?” And it’s a great traffic driver for the blogs, and it stimulates conversation.

RAND: Are there times that you have actually proactively put information on your blog as a way to say, “I want to start communications?”

BROWN: Oh, yes, I will post if I know we’re about to do something controversial, kind of a clarification before it hits the press so that people aren’t as surprised by what’s going on. Once we’ve set the policy, I might come out of a [CTA] board meeting and post immediately after the board meeting and clarify what the board did and why it did it. Again, it was very reactionary starting it but it’s been an incredible tool to explain policy and why we’re doing what we’re doing.

WEICK: Yes, we actually initiate [topics]. I’ll give you a couple of examples. Our chief operating officer has been using blogs internally as a scheduling blog. He’ll set aside a block of time which he then will advertise to the organization as “I’ll be available live on my blog. Join. Ask me a question. Whatever you might have.” He’ll publish this around the world. So we may get a comment from a staffer or a franchisee from some market in Asia participating.

Typically, the first couple of these he’s started with a topic of interest of the day. But the last one he did he just opened it without any kind of impetus and looked to see what questions were coming in. So we’re using a couple of different ways. On my own blog, I usually… when I get into meetings face to face with people, I’ll do town halls or breakfasts or things like that. Usually, I come up with two or three items of interest. I’ll start out with 5 or 10 minutes of dialogue around that and the rest of the time I’ll do Q&A. Actually, it’s a very similar model for the blogs as I do with those live interactions.

RAND: Where do you see the impact of blogs on a bigger scale impacting the media?

BAKER: I like to think they distribute information, and so we no longer have the hammerlock on information as we once had. That’s why we have to participate, because we share the same stage with so many other news producers of one kind or another. So if we’re not everywhere in that galaxy, then I’d say we’re in a little bit of trouble.

RAND: What about libel? Is that something where it feels like it’s getting a little bit more out of control?

IWATA: We’ve had an incident come up where an external blogger wrote, saying essentially, “IBM is ripping off this company and named the client. I know [because] I was a consultant for a contractor on that particular engagement and here’s everything that happened, and IBM is a terrible company” and this and that.

We looked at and asked, “What do we do about this?” By the way, some of our competitors were weighing in and saying, “Yeah.” So, it was a test of the guidelines, among other things, and I think the company learned a lot from it.

One, maybe in this case we didn’t do everything we were supposed to. So we checked our facts, we contacted the client, and we contacted the company that’s part of this, the client, and [asked] how should we respond? They said, we don’t want anything to do with this blogfest….We found a colleague down within the organization who was a part of the engagement, and we said would you be comfortable posting a comment offering your perspective. We don’t want you to attack this person or defend the company. Just represent the facts.

The person was happy to do so. The next day, out comes his comment saying [to the blogger]: “You are entitled to your opinion, but I was also on that engagement. Here are three things you said. Here are facts as I know them, and just so everybody knows.” And the whole thing just blew over.

I wouldn’t call that libel. It comes to the issue of some facts are being putting out there that are not to your advantage, and if they are not truthful, how do you respond?

BAKER: Traditionally, publications publish, distribute hundreds and thousands or millions of editions, and if there’s a libelous assertion in it, then it’s there forever. And blogs are a process. And if a blogger writes something that may be libelous, it’s easy to go in and correct it. I’m not a lawyer, but there are different damages here.

RAND: If there are one or two things that you hope folks would take away from this session as key learnings, what would they be?

IWATA: First, we’ve talked a lot about the technology or the fact of blogs, but the real phenomenon here is the fact that people can engage with you. The real question for corporations is, “Are you going to capitalize on that? Or are you going to resist it for awhile?” Eventually everyone will have to deal with it.

In the case of employees, you better go to the trouble of hiring and retaining the smartest people you can. Be absolutely clear that you value their opinions. If you do, then not only should you not be afraid of engaging with each other or with management, you should capitalize on that.

BROWN: The one thing that kind of scares me a little is I can’t stop. Because the expectation’s there.

WEICK: It’s not the be all and end all. It’s just another tool. Another weapon you have. Another way to touch more with people. And consider the value you’re going to get for it when you choose to do it and how you’re going to do it. That way, you’ll get the most effective use out of it versus just putting a blog up for the blog’s sake.

BAKER: I would encourage people not necessarily to blog, but to take the first step toward blogging, which is to find out in your job or your profession or your industry, which are the blogs that people are reading; which are the interesting ones. And then subscribe to those blogs…at least read them. Then subscribe to them. And, basically, monitor them, and after awhile you may decide you want to jump in. You may decide that you don’t. But I bet you won’t regret having access to that information and having an ear on that conversation.