The Scoble Conundrum

MediaPost features a story today probing the limits of "employee blogging" in light of the Robert Scoble incident in which he harshly criticized his employer, Microsoft, for removing a controversial Chinese weblog.  The piece echoes many of the tough questions we tackle in the Intelliseek/Edelman white paper entitled "Talking from the Inside Out:The Rise of Employee Bloggers."  Insofar as employee blogging straddles the line between subtle and overt consumer-generated media, the inevitable question emerges: where's the proper line?  While the proliferation of "employee blogging policies" are helping put guidelines and frameworks against this vexing question, the Robert Scoble example is quite unusual, if not exceptional.  With initial blessing from Microsoft, he jumped into -- nay defined and shaped -- the blogosophere faster than most of us could say the word "blog," and in the process of accumulating links, cross-links, trackbacks, pings, early and unstoppable indexing on Google, conference invites, "tell us about the blog phenomenon" interviews, and more, he's basically transcended Microsoft.   

The Conundrum:  Which presents a interesting dilemma -- dare I say conundrum -- for Microsoft.  On one hand, in the process of becoming one of the blogophere's leading authority -- he even has a new book, Naked Conversations -- he's undoubtedly one of Microsoft's best and most marketable PR assets.  And yet, so much of his authority, credibility, believability rests in a perception that he speaks with a critical, independent, "as I see it" mindset, and periodically throws some tough love, if not harsh criticism, toward the hand that feeds his base salary.  I've met him a few times at blog conferences, and there's an unmistakably real, genuine, "I am who I am" quality to this guy which, combined with his spot-on philosophy about the role of "passion and authority" in shaping the blogophere, elevates his "trust currency."  All of which boosts the stakes for just about everything he says, especially around the hot spots. Ostensibly innocuous comments blogged today versus two years ago suddenly have far greater consequences and a reach factor that would make most "paid media" agencies salivate.  Everyone's listening to this guy!  Alas, the conundrum!