Mercury News obtains a copy of Otellini's blog to employees. Candid discussions.
mercurynews.com
Intel blog: what the boss thinks
By Dean Takahashi
Mercury News
Like many a corporate executive, Intel President Paul Otellini rarely deviates from the company line in public. But read Otellini's blog and you'll see what he really thinks.
In contrast to the public online journals of most corporate executives, Otellini's blog is strictly for Intel employees' eyes only, published on the company's internal Web site. But a copy of the 8-week-old blog obtained by the Mercury News shows Otellini unplugged, conversing candidly with Intel's rank and file about the challenges facing the Santa Clara chip giant. Otellini, who becomes Intel's next chief executive in May, even praises Advanced Micro Devices, his Sunnyvale rival whose existence company executives take pains to ignore.
``While I hate losing share, the reality is that our competitor has a very strong product offering,'' Otellini wrote in a Jan. 10 entry.
As more corporate chieftains get bitten by the blogging bug, blogs are transforming the way executives interact with their employees and the public. Blogging may offer a new way to push a company's agenda, but it is not without risk. The very nature of blogging encourages -- even demands -- a certain frankness guaranteed to give public relations executives and lawyers headaches.
``This has caught a lot of folks by surprise,'' said Steve Rubel, vice president of the Cooper Katz public relations firm in New York who writes a blog called MicroPersuasion (steverubel.typepad.com/micropersuasion). ``It's like having a brown-bag lunch with the CEO, but for everybody to see.''
Among the blogs written in executive suites are those from General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz (fast lane.gmblogs.com), Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz (blogs.sun. com/jonathan) and Rich Marcello (devresource.hp. com/blogs/marcello), a senior vice president at Hewlett-Packard.
Otellini declined to discuss his blog. But in an interview Lutz acknowledged that GM's lawyers raised concerns about his blog. Still, he said the company doesn't ``scrub the content.''
``We'd lose all credibility,'' Lutz said.
He said he joined the ``bloggerati'' out of annoyance with media's portrayal of Detroit car makers as ``dinosaurs.''
``It's a pervasive bias, and I get frustrated by it,'' said Lutz, whose blog draws 4,000 visitors a day. ``With the blog, I can work around it.''
Blogs are more interactive than Web sites because readers can post their responses for others to see and the bloggers post their own replies in a kind of running conversation.
``There's an immediacy of interaction you can get with your audience through blogging that's hard to get any other way, except by face-to-face communication,'' wrote Schwartz in an e-mail.
Unlike Sun's blogs, Otellini's blog is not meant for public consumption.
However, in his first post -- which drew 350 responses from Intel employees -- Otellini recognized that nothing online stays secret for long. ``While this is intended as an internal blog, I recognize that it will become public -- welcome to the Internet! As a result, please recognize that I may be a bit limited in my comments and responses to protect Intel.''
Even so, Otellini's comments and the remarks of Intel employees are much more blunt than executives are in their public speeches.
``Paul wanted another way to communicate with employees,'' said Intel spokesman Tom Beerman. ``It is meant for employees only, and that explains the tone and nature of the subject matter.''
Among other topics, employees queried Otellini about the competitive threats raised by video game consoles, Apple Computer's Mac mini computer and its iPod music player -- all which use competitors' chips.
Otellini wrote in his blog that at January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas he was disturbed by the ``amount of change and technology moving into cell phones,'' a market where Intel lags competitors.
``I think this show was a call to urgency for us to move faster in this arena,'' he said. ``This playing field is being defined without our participation at this time.''
Greg Evans, a San Francisco attorney who advises companies about blogs, cautioned that executives should always make clear the rules for corporate blogs.
Still, he called Otellini's blog a new kind of company town hall.
``It's a better and more rapid form of internal communication,'' said Evans. ``I applaud companies that engage in this kind of dialogue. It shows courage and a real interest in hearing from the company on all levels.''
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