Here at ReadWriteWeb we spend a lot of time reading the blogs of companies we write about (send yours to tips@readwriteweb.com) and we've found that some of them are just plain fun. An interesting company blog can be a great way to draw in new people through relevant content of general interest - and some of them will stay to check out the service you provide.
Some companies just blog about updates to their own technology and that's good for existing users to see. Others are fun to read whether you're a user or not. Here are some of the company blogs we recommend reading for a good time.
You can't talk about interesting company blogs without mentioning Signal vs. Noise, the wildly successful blog about design, usability and small business from the makers of project management service Basecamp. This blog could easily stand on its own as compelling reading even if there wasn't a company behind it selling services. Sure enough, it's even got an ad on it from the elite boutique ad network The Deck. Signal vs. Noise has 88k subscribers - making it fun and educational for those subscribers is great for the business of 37signals.
Ning powers niche social networks and the company's blog is a great place to find out about all kinds of groups that are actively using this technology. Some of them a real surprise. The International Society of Space Entreprenuers, the Eat Local Foods Coalition of Maine and the ASPCA Book Club all have social networks! Who knew? Now how about some data portability, Ning? If you want to read about the theoretical side of niche social networks, check out data portability lovin' competitor PeopleAggregator's blog, written by the company's prolific CEO Marc Canter.
Viddler is a crazy feature rich video hosting service with a very good blog. In addition to feature announcements, the company posts a wide variety of videos that are interesting to watch. That's where I discovered this one below, for example.
RSS company Newsgator has a great blog about RSS use cases, data portability debates and other industry topics. Maybe I'm just an RSS head - but I really enjoy their blogging. Newsgator competitor Attensa also has a very good blog about all things RSS - but it sure could use some more updates!
Collaborative design tool A.viary has a couple of very good blogs. Their idea blog is full of interesting content that regularly hits the front page of digg. These folks have some seriously juvenile gender issues going on, which I have given them a hard time about before, but their blog is still fun to read otherwise. Every post they put up is worth a look.
User experience and design firm Adaptive Path publishes a very thought provoking blog. I usually scan company blogs for announcements and videos - but their longer posts often convince me to stop and read. OLPC: The Beauty of Failure and Greedy Mobile Interfaces? I'll stop and read posts with titles like that.
What could be more dreary than commoditized data processing and storage services? While that might sound boring, the AWS Blog does a great job of highlighting cool things that are done on top of Amazon Web Services. Lately they've put up posts about how AWS are being used by the New York Times to provide online access to 150 years of archives and by the little ShareThis widget that you've probably seen on hundreds of thousands of blogs around the web. Lots of charts, graphs and other fun stuff for nerds on this blog.
Here at RWW we've been following the mega-funded recommendation service Strands for several years. We find what they do fascinating. Their company blog is mostly about company announcements, but they have really interesting announcements. Last.fm on Nokia phones? Cool! The most interesting section of their blog though is the data portability category and throughout the blog you'll find some really deep thoughts on cutting edge innovation.
Articulate is a an e-learning tools company with a very popular blog. More than 20,000 subscribers actively discuss topics like how to make a good screencast and how best to work with clip art. This was a new one to me but I've already enjoyed spending some time on this company's blog. What more could you ask from a company blog? Good content creates a community of advocates that share the blog with friends, some of whom undoubtedly will purchase the company's products.
There really are a fair number of interesting company blogs around the web. We'd love to hear about some of your favorites. Others that are worth checking out include Oracle Apps Lab for a fun discussion of web 2.0 in the enterprise, the Lijit blog on "searching the social graph" and the many fun blogs published by Adobe.
If you found this post of interest, you might enjoy reading our coverage of some of the top new social media company evangelists as well.
We hope you find some of these blogs worth subscribing to and we'd love to learn about other blogs that cover topics of general interest that even non-customers would enjoy reading.
Comments
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I'm throwing in my vote for Woot.com's company blog. (http://www.woot.com/Blog/) You get the well-written product description posts + internal company stories.
Posted by: Josh Lowensohn | May 23, 2008 11:48 AM
Thanks for the list. It's helpful to have some company blogs to which we can aspire. I didn't know about Articulate's weblog, which seems like a treasure trove of practical advice. However, the link you use doesn't seem to redirect properly. The URL that worked for me is http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/
Posted by: kawika
|
May 23, 2008 11:56 AM
What's really great to see is the evolution of company blogs over the years, from generally being boring press release-type things to being interesting places to visit. When I first started my blog, the quality of many of the company blogs was just terrible. Somewhat scared product managers writing way too carefully...
And, of course, I'm hopelessly biased, but I would add my company blog to the list ;-)
Alex Eckelberry
CEO
Sunbelt Software
Posted by: alex | May 23, 2008 11:58 AM
Ah, I totally forgot about Newsgator when you asked me earlier! Yes, they have a great blog...I'm a fan :)
Posted by: Sarah Perez
|
May 23, 2008 12:21 PM
Thanks Marshall (and Sarah).
The blog you reference is actually a NewsGator widget that is aggregating a broad array of feeds. We use our content management tool, called Editors Desk, to remove posts that are either inappropriate or simply not relevant to the RSS and syndication topics.
Posted by: Jeff Nolan | May 23, 2008 12:55 PM
by "the blog you reference..." I was referring to the NewsGator blog. :)
Posted by: Jeff Nolan | May 23, 2008 12:56 PM
Thanks for the kind words. We really enjoy writing the AWS blog.
Posted by: Jeff Barr | May 23, 2008 12:59 PM
Thanks for mentioning Viddler's blog on that list. I am the primary blogger/featurer, so it's great to know that you're enjoying the variety of content that I try to highlight every day. :)
Brandice
Community Leader
Viddler.com
Posted by: Brandice | May 23, 2008 1:24 PM
It's nice to see the Articulate blog in such good company.
For those interested, the April Fool's Day post was by far our most popular.
Posted by: Tom Kuhlmann | May 23, 2008 1:28 PM
Thanks Marshall!!!
We are honored to be in this list together with some of the best company blogs out there.
Posted by: Gabriel Aldamiz-echevarrÃa | May 23, 2008 2:04 PM
I like the Kodak blog the best: http://1000words.kodak.com/
Posted by: Robert Scoble | May 23, 2008 10:58 PM
Marshall, Great post of company blogs. Blogs are slowly become more of a vital part of a company to bring in early traffic to the site. For this reason we have built our own blog at http://routenote.com/blog which will hopefully help us gain some of the early traffic that is needed. However, that is a lot easier said than done. With there being more and more startups these days, it is hard to get your startup to stand out.. and a blog cant hurt!
Posted by: Steven Finch | May 24, 2008 4:51 AM
Thank you very much for the list. You made my day!
Posted by: Jesvin | May 24, 2008 5:02 AM
Nice list, very useful. I like newsgator...
Posted by: zack | May 24, 2008 7:25 AM
The importance of company blogs increases with the legitimate regulatory need for more corporate transparency, required by the "Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency Act" or "CAARTA". In order to mitigate operational risk of internal and external fraud, there exist no better way than corporate transparency to implement a more bottom up and democratic corporate environment and to enforce better COSO ERM (enterprise risk management) practices.
Corporate blogs increase trust and opportunities! They also reduce and mitigate operational and reputational risks!
Just ask Robert Scoble why Microsoft offered him the job to be on Microsoft's payroll.
It's excellent to have more and better corporate blogs!
Posted by: Lucas Wyrsch | May 24, 2008 8:53 AM
The Southwest Airlines blog is great! Shows off their culture and it's updated all the time.
Posted by: Mike | May 24, 2008 10:36 AM
Thanks Marshall, especially for the "fun" tag. We like to keep the enterprise talk light and fun as much as possible.
Posted by: Jake | May 24, 2008 10:58 AM
I really like Viddler´s support to high quality videos.
Posted by: JP | May 24, 2008 2:24 PM
Hey, that completely uncalled for. Our gender issues are fully grown!
In a more serious note, thanks for including us. We'll try to be more consciences about posting anything that is offensive or degrading to any group going forward.
Posted by: Avi Muchnick | May 24, 2008 7:35 PM
I keep our company blog that covers both our Convos product updates and things that inspire in the world of design, architecture, technology, etc. It has been great at sharing our philosophy with users.
(I + P) - The Convos Blog
Posted by: Matt | May 25, 2008 6:49 PM
Thanks for the pointers. I've seen the 37 signals blog and I don't think it's anything interesting though. Just the stuff about the features and about their customers. Nothing really useful to read though, if you don't use Basecamp or Highrise. Here's a really interesting project management blog written by Wrike creator. I won't say its for everybody, there are lots of difficult terms like collective intelligence or emergent structures, but the author has a clear voice and his posts are thought provoking.
Posted by: Dave | May 26, 2008 12:13 AM
On the Viddler videos you can make video comments. This is one place I think video comments don't make sense. It would be alright I think if it wasn't in the video, but when it is in the video you have to pause the video to watch the comment.
Posted by: Matthew Osborn-Grosso | May 26, 2008 7:03 PM
Sweet! Scoble likes our blog! We aim to please! http://1000words.kodak.com/
Posted by: Jenny Cisney (Kodak Chief Blogger) | May 27, 2008 12:32 PM
Thanks for the list! I didn't know those company blog's are so interesting to read on..I'm totally hooked on it now
Posted by: acne treatment | May 28, 2008 5:20 AM
Thanks for the list. I'm inspired to make our company blog the best ever.
Posted by: Chris Tingom | June 1, 2008 5:45 PM
Thank you so much for putting this together - I have just started a company and a company blog and I was a blog virgin so I need as much advice / clues about blogging as possible - this list is going to be my bible from now on!
Posted by: Lisa Scales | June 2, 2008 4:55 AM