Where has this gone?

Several pieces of new information have surfaced which challenge a couple of my assumptions that I began this project with.

1) I'm not sure that it's fair to characterize the blog activity surrounding software development using Microsoft technology as a Microsoft directed effort.

2) It's clear that a substantial percentage of the blog authors writing about Microsoft technology are not Microsoft employees.

Where does this leave my hypothesis that Microsoft is seeking to communicate facts, foster innovation, and build communities?

Honestly, it's impossible to know for certain whether or not the blogging at Microsoft is a 'directed effort'. I posed this question to a number of people who were raising questions about my assumption that this was the case. The only response I got was a link to a blog that was inaccessible. Too bad. Nevertheless, yesterday I suggested that the truth about what was driving the blogging doesn't really matter. I suggested that what mattered was the average blog reader's peception.

Unfortunately this may raise more questions that it answers. What is the average blogger? How could a researcher gauge the average blogger's perception? Luckily, a Communication or Media Technology researcher should be well equipped to handle both of these questions. For example, conducting interviews with blog readers, holding focus groups, and making observations of blog readers could all contribute to further understanding.

While many of the bloggers I focused on may not actually be Microsoft employees the degree to which they are affiliated with Microsoft is unclear and hard to discover. Still, the majority (~57% or 572 of 991) are Microsoft employees. Additionally, perception plays a role here as well. Eventhough a blog author may not be employed by Microsoft his or her blog can be hosted at weblogs.asp.net. How many blog readers will take the time to discover this fact?

Continuing on...

The fact remains that these blogs are communicating information that at times is represented as fact. In the majority of cases, the technical blogs in particular, that is pretty fair to say. In other cases, Scoble's blog for example, blog authors are guiding readers through vast amounts of information.

Blogs that focus on Microsoft technolgy (authored by employees or affiliated people) clearly foster innovation. It some cases it may be innovative software development techniques. For example, using XML in a relational database engine. In other cases, it may be in choosing to adopt a new technology. For example, adopting the TabletPC as a way of working. Additionally, by guiding readers through "chatter" blog authors are in a unique position allowing them to help bring new ideas to reader's attention.

Perhaps the biggest single idea embodies in my hypothesis was: Do these blogs help build online communities?

I realize now that this was too big a question for this project to really answer. Without interviewing a vast number of people the only way I can think of to address this question is to conduct an analysis of reader usage patterns. For example, analyzing web logs (not weblogs) of servers hosting blogs for return visitors and comments would be a great first step. Even if researchers were to do this, I personally think that interviews and other techniques would be necessary to really justify any findings.