A brouhaha involving the temporary shutdown of the Facebook account of popular tech blogger Robert Scoble sparked discussion recently of a new issue for 2008: data portability.

Scoble tried to export the names, email addresses and birthdays of his close to 5,000 "friends" on Facebook into a beta version of Plaxo (the address book updating service).

His Facebook account was shutdown but then quickly reinstated when, presumably, the Facebook folks realized how powerful he is in the blogosphere. (Scoble's blog is currently ranked #36 on Technorati - so Top 50 - out of…

Blogging is a key piece of Web 2.0 or the Social Web, as it's called. The Social Web means crowdsourcing: looking to your customers and fans for knowledge and smarts. It means that painstaking creation of static, stuffy, stilted Web pages is out. Blogs (interactive) are in. Here are my Top 8 Tips to launch an effective corporate blogging program in 2008.

1. Use humor

I don't mean funny ha ha. Poke fun at yourself. Be self-deprecating.  Readers love it. It may be the #1 way to make your blog appear human and to strip…

Quoted In...

Readers are saying… The Best How-To Book on Corporate Blogging and The Best Business Blogging Book.

The Washington Post

Kudos to the Personal Branding Global Telesummit marking the 10th anniversary of the publication of Tom Peters’ now iconic article: The Brand Called You. I led a session on How to Write a Great Business Blog and was one of dozens of speakers who donated their time. The Washington Post covered the event in a short article: Your Brandwidth. Reporter

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