By now you've heard about a few people who have gotten fired for blogging about their work. From here on out, I'll refer to the act of blogging at work as "wogging" (work blogging, get it?). So a blog solely about where you work is a "wog" (work blog). Now that I've made up some new phrases, lets move on.
Technorati, popular blog search engine recently forced an employee to remove a post about the subject of blogging in the workplace ironically. That leads us to other stories that have brought this phenomenon to mainstream news.
You've heard of Mark Jen, he's the one who was fired from Google for talking about some of the Google decisions in his blog. His wogging wasn't a horrible offense, and plenty of people have said worse things about Google. However, given then high profile of Google, his story got a lot of news.
Apple is going after bloggers for posting inside information about them, even though media outlets have had silent sources for years and years.
Another popular wog was that of Ellen Simonetti. Yup, the Delta Airlines employee who posted some light hearted pictures on her site while wearing her flight attendant uniform. She also shared stories about some of her least favorite customers, but used no names. It was a very amusing group of stories, but once Delta got wind of it, she was fired.
The most famous wogger was Heather Armstrong, who writes the popular Dooce.com. She wrote about clients, the company, and co-workers. Most of it wasn't nice, but boy was it entertaining.
So is it fair to get fired for something you write in your own personal blog? Is it worse if you actually write the posts while at work?
Do you blog at work? Are you a wogger?
It seems like Blogs are causing companies to rethink their code of conduct and ethics, and this is a story gaining ground. Keep an eye on Ready, Set, BLOG! for developments.
- Drew Olanoff
