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

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 over 100 million blogs.)

There is no privacy

Translated... there is no privacy. If you're using any kind of online service, your "data" -- your name,…

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