Blogs are no longer just outlets for cranky people but are increasingly being used by businesses to peddle products, communicate with employees, and project a corporate image to the world, said panelists at the Supernova 2005 technology conference which began Tuesday.

Web logs, or blogs, began popping up on the Internet several years ago as forums for private citizens to share their personal musings on everything from child rearing to “Seinfeld.” But a growing number of companies are finding that blogs are also legitimate business tools that can help with interactive marketing or internal communications, the technology experts said during a “Business Blogging” workshop before the San Francisco conference’s official start.

San Francisco

What’s key for management is realizing that even though corporate bloggers may have a slightly irreverent tone, they often really do have a constructive agenda, the panelists said.

“They’re typically not out to change the corporate culture,” said Michael Sippey of Internet publishing toolmakers Six Apart. “They just want to solve a problem.”

Recently, there have been several high-profile cases of companies firing employees for blogging about their employers. "No one ever got fired for blogging," said Mr. Sippey. "People got fired for being stupid."

These days, firms are scrambling to establish corporate blogging guidelines and to launch their own blogs to have more control over the spread of information.

However, the panelists said companies should learn to give corporate bloggers some leeway and that allowing them to disseminate company knowledge can sometimes help drum up business.

Knowledge Sharing

“Share your knowledge,” said Microsoft technology evangelist Robert Scoble. A plumber with a blog could have more luck getting business than one who places an ad listing on Google, said Mr. Scoble.

“Share your knowledge,” said Microsoft technology evangelist Robert Scoble. A plumber with a blog could have more luck getting business than one who places an ad listing on Google, said Mr. Scoble.

A potential customer could be skeptical of the plumber’s paid ad, but a blog describing how the plumber fixes a sink makes the plumber seem more skilled, Mr. Scoble said. “And they’re not giving away their knowledge because someone looking for a plumber doesn’t want to do it himself,” Mr. Scoble said.

Mr. Scoble was hired by Microsoft to blog about the software giant after he had blogged about the company, sometimes negatively, on his own. The company now has about 1,500 blogging employees. Mr. Scoble said the company has a single guideline: Be smart.

But Mr. Scoble, who also works as a consultant, said corporate management at big companies is still wary of blogs. “There’s a mindset that ‘we’ll let the brand speak for us, [that] we don’t speak for the company,’” he said.

Disney is using blogs as an internal communications tool, said Forrester analyst Charlene Li. Before the blogs, the entertainment company had tried to implement new software for employees to be able to log events, but the program had some bugs. So the employees switched to blogging on the web. Now employees on different shifts can read the blogs to know what’s going on, Ms. Li said.