Guess it sucks to have the word “blog” in your URL if you want your content getting through to some workplaces that are going as far as banning the word at the company firewall.

Filtering out every blog isn’t a completely feasible project (and, in fact, Mason says his company’s filter doesn’t catch everything), but the technology to censor the lion’s share of blogs is fairly commonplace. From installing simple URL filters and content scanners to blacklisting ranges of IP addresses, myriad methods for shutting out blog content are available.

I can see filtering objectionable material at work, but let’s be real: filtering blogs? I’m not sure how effective this would be anyway, because of RSS and the employee could get the RSS through another site that doesn’t have “blog” in it. Somebody is probably already programming an RSS proxy that will replace any instance of “blog” in content with some other user-defined word.

A company anti-blog policy makes little sense to actually curb content getting blogged after work or off premises. It might actually encourage it from disgruntled employees. Conversely, an open blogging policy which clearly defines the type of material that cannot be blogged might actually give the company some extra exposure and good will.

If an employee really wants to blog something they can blog it after hours or use their cellphone to get the word out, so there is no technology that can stop that.

Some employers really need to learn to trust their employees more. Yes, there are employees who abuse internet access at work but I’ve yet to see one compelling study that shows that these same employees aren’t using the internet to get work done off the clock. The internet at work is sort of like the telephone and most employers don’t block who employees can call, do they? They may have policies about personal calls at work and internet usage should be defined in a company policy as well. That’s wiser than going all keyword ninja on the firewall.

Wait, none of these employers who block the use of the word blog will be able to see this? Doh!

Unrelated but I was glad to see the local Y finally has open WiFi. Too bad it only works in the lobby and toward the front of the building. They need to get some repeaters and then I’ll literally be able to blog from the treadmill. Scary, huh?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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