I often e-mail friends when I see something of interest about their company out on the web. The majority of the time it's either a positive/negative blog post or more recently a video on YouTube. The problem is that they are usually blocked from seeing this content by their corporate internet police.
I can understand some of the reasoning behind the filtering. Corporations don't want their staff hanging out on YouTube, LiveJournal or MySpace all day. However, in some cases those places are where customers are hanging out and talking. Blocking the staff from accessing this content just further builds up the walls around the corporate office, keeping them out of touch with the customer base. Nothing worse than hearing about that hilarious video that mocks your company, but not being able to view it.
In most cases my friends/clients will send a request to IT asking that the blocking be removed for this person or that office. Most of the time it's PR/marketing that needs access, but how about public/legislative affairs as well?
Shel Holtz has been a longtime critic of blocking or monitoring employee internet use. I agree with him. Hopefully more corporations will stop the practice or ease up on the filtering, there's a whole world out there that they're missing.
Visitor Comments
Josh - I think more than anything else it's a matter of 'brand lag' and them just not catching up yet. They probably installed the firewalls a few years back after it was found what employees might really be looking at.
Now, as you point out, this is ironically a perfect opportunity for brands to tap into the consumer zeitgeist. We’re also experiencing the first real period of consumer brand awareness where companies can connect directly and engage them in conversation.
Will brands catch up to this now is the thing though. I came across something interesting at cluetrain.com a few months ago, and it addresses these concerns that consumers have about corporations reaching the innner circles of their conversation. It's a consumer manifesto and worth a read:
http://www.cluetrain.com/
Posted by: makethelogobigger | March 28, 2006 5:16 PM