Meg wrote a great piece
Meg wrote a great piece on Macromedia's recent foray into blogging.
It looks like Macromedia is seemingly picking and choosing what parts of the Cluetrain Manifesto to follow. "Talk in a language customers understand" would be a good way to support blogs for the company, but to not put them on their own corporate server seems like they don't trust their employees to be human in a corporate setting. The bit about not writing about what you ate for breakfast is similar. I don't want to read a fake personal blog filled with press releases. When I found out that John Dowdell was running a blog a month ago or so (saw it on his sig), I thought it was a great idea. I've met John and he's a really eccentric and interesting guy, so I was looking forward to hearing what he really thinks about stuff that isn't Macromedia related, but his blog is pretty heavy on MX-release stuff and not much more, and I was concerned that he didn't disclose his connection prominently on the site.
Meg's points all ring true because Macromedia is in effect saying:
"You guys can take advantage of that blog trend thing so we look good, but don't say anything except the company line, and do it outside of work."
which isn't exactly what blogging is all about (on the bright side, it seems like a few choices were made by accident and they are learning).