Mack Collier writes a review of coca-cola blog for the Fortune 500 business blogging wiki, which for those of you following a certain sporting event in China at the moment is especially relevant with the Olympics running and Coke's 80th anniversary sponsorship.
The GM Fastlane Blog recently went through a redesign after two years of the same design. Highlights include:
- Incorporating Twitter
- Incorporating Video
- More space for bigger picture
- Pull down archives show the number of posts per month
- A photo gallery
- Recent posts split by six different categories
This from Christopher Barger, GM's Director of Global Communications Technology
Bob Lutz, GM's Vice Chairman, also wrote an important post, "Working Hard on Tomorrow, Today," about the recent changes at General Motors. The post received over 230 comments. I was thinking it must be difficult to manage that volume of comments, and that it actually would be easier if some sort of threaded discussion was incorporated into the design of the comment section.
What was also interesting that the post was about some of the downsizing at GM, and that a number of GM employees commented on the post. Some of the employees identified themselves, and some did not.
Last week the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it was seeking the approval of new guidelines on the use of company web sites for fair disclosure by public companies. Those new guidelines, if approved, may mean that companies can disclose information about their public company on a website instead of having to use a press release or telephone conference.
Jonathan Schwartz Blogs About Changes To Fair Disclosure
In September of 2006, Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of SUN Microsystems sent a letter to Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to encourage the use of websites and blogs for the fair disclosure of information by public companies instead of using press releases and conference calls.
Christopher Cox wrote back to Mr. Schwartz in November of 2006, but also posted his response on the SUN CEO's blog, Mr. Cox welcomed the dialogue and encouraged more ideas in light of the expanding nature of the Internet.
Jonathan followed up the letter with a discourse with the SEC chairman, and wrote another post in March of 2007.
That post may give us some clues to what is going to happen in the new rules for public disclosure when it comes to company websites and blogs, Jonathan Schwartz proposed a number of guidelines for fair disclosure to Chairman Cox.
“Propose is a new policy under which online communications would fully satisfy Regulation FD’s broad distribution requirement provided that: • for a webcast (and related slides), the webcast is made available on a company’s investor relations site and notice of the webcast is posted at least three business days in advance or as early as possible; • for a corporate blog or individual blog of a senior official of the Company (as defined in Reg FD), the blog is linked prominently to the company’s investor relations site; and, • for a press release, it is posted to the company’s investor relations site within the time periods specified for Form 8K filings.”
And Mr. Schwartz went onto to recommend several rules for ensuring any public company online communications satisfied Regulation Fair Disclosure, which you can find in his post.
In fact if you take a look at SUN's investor relations website you may be looking at the company archetype investor relations website of the future, with RSS feeds and links to CEO, Jonathan Schwartz's blog.
For more information on Regulation FD or Fair Disclosure check out these listings:
Rule 100 -- General Rule regarding selective Disclosure.
Rule 101 --
Also, check out Tim Bray's analysis of some of the arguments for and against the use of blogs and company websites for fair disclosure.
Social Media Press Release For Fair Disclosure
Brian Solis wrote a thoughtful blog post on Techcrunch suggesting that the social media press release was the way to go for public company disclosure on public company websites. The SMPR might be one possible avenue, but I was also thinking the solution presented by SUN on their investor relations website was pretty good.
Brian, I wonder if you can clarify whether you consider the types of posts on the SUN website could be described as a social media press release. There are definitely some of the same elements, RSS specifically, but I also thought the version on the SUN website was a lot more basic.
Update: The SEC guidelines were posted on Friday. Via IRWebreport
Increased use of data analysis by newsrooms was one finding from the report, “The Changing Newsroom,” by the project for the excellence in journalism by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ). The results make interesting reading regarding the impact of the web on the state of journalism. Read the report, it is intriguing, depressing, and hopeful.
What most interested me was the section on the changing newsroom and the influence of the web. In light of my previous post about the changing nature of journalism I was particularly interested to read about the increasing use of data analysis by journalists.
This quote was good:
"Orlando Sentinel editor Charlotte Hall called the creation of a data team the “single most significant innovation” to come out of the paper’s 2007 reorganization in terms of generating new reporting skills for both the web and print versions of the paper. The team brought together everyone at the paper responsible for gathering data for listings, then melded them with library researchers and archivists, a reporter trained in computer-assisted reporting (CAR) plus an editor who had been a high-level database researcher. Their job, she said, is to mine data, then work with other teams across the paper to develop stories based on that data. Initial results have included front page enterprise stories on local restaurants and housing foreclosures."
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