Corporate Blogging: Meet Fortune 500 Blogger - Sun’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz

Jonathan Schwartz is probably the highest profile individual to blog as CEO of Sun Microsystems, a Fortune 500 company. But that is not what this article is about. It is instructive to note how he leverages his blog to communicate with share-holders and Sun customers.

Jonathan was blogging before he became CEO of Sun and he continued blogging after that.

Immediately after the announcement of a massive layoff at Sun, Schwartz blogs about the press release with gory details, reviewing the thought processes behind these decisions and providing “color on our going forward market focus and R&D priorities”. This could as well be a primer on how a CEO should blog and how to communicate hard decisions.

The comments add more perspective to this entry with a couple of disgruntled Sun customers in the fray. Apparently he doesn’t address his comments which is understandable given his priorities. However it might be better if he had someone on his staff trying to address some of the issues raised in the comments.

Today blogging has become an important communication tool for corporations. It can be leveraged to reach customers and share-holders easily and cheaply. It has its own dangers too. An interactive media like blogging allows customers to easily air their discontent which can easily be viewed by a worldwide audience in a matter of minutes. Hence any serious issues raised must be promptly addressed to prevent snowballing into a PR catastrophie. Overall blogging makes a corporation more responsive and attuned to customer needs.