One of the main worries of a business going into blogging is "filtering" what gets online. Basically, there are legal reasons, PR reasons, and sometimes incorrect assumptions that lead a company to desire that information that goes onto its blog, or the blogs of its employees, be filtered. By this, I mean that companies don’t want certain information online; and in some cases, certain opinions.

The idea of blogging is authentic. Transparent. Unedited. In the corporate world, this is scary. Dropping not just the PR-speak, but the protection of editors, has its risks. Most companies creat policies to outline the rules, but even then there are mistakes.

Take, for example, IBM. They have a policy. A good one. But it didn’t cover all possible future outcomes of having a blog.

One Don Ferguson, previous IBM employee and blogger, had his blog erased by IBM. His opinions were considered, in retrospect, not something IBM wanted online. That created a huge backlash against IBM for censorship. They responded, correctly, by reinstating the blog.

A lesson to be learned: blogs are permanent. What is said is online forever, and taking down a post, or a blog, is not only impossible (it will still be cached), but it can harm your reputation in a serious way.