Fortune 500 Corporate Blog Review: EDS (#108)

First, full disclosure: I worked for Electronic Data Systems (NYSE: EDS), in its Telecommunications Strategic Business Unit, between 1992 and 1997.

On to the review. I'd like to compliment EDS, first of all, on making its corporate blogs easy to find. You can reach this summary link right from the eds.com home page. Excellent!

There are two blogs. The first contains insights and opinions from EDS fellows (its best and brightest technical minds) on the future of technology. We'll discuss that one here. A future post will discuss the other (quite different) blog, "The Goal: Customer Service In The IT Industry."

Name: "The Next Big Thing"

History: regular posts since June 2005.

Frequency of posts: Fifteen to twenty per month.

Nature of posts: Opinions regarding current technology trends and news. There was no mention in any of the posts that I read (a dozen or so) of EDS' business at all. The "sales pitch" quotient was therefore a big zero--good. If it doesn't quite live up to its advertisement as "an unfiltered vehicle for some of our leading technology experts to candidly discuss trends, attitudes and the impact of technology on our lives," there are at least firm points of view (see this post on the Zune MP3 player). They're not afraid to go far afield of their domain expertise, making for a nicely eclectic blog--if you'd like to read some thoughts inspired by moon colonization, click here.

Design/functionality: Easy to read, which is good because it's all text--no graphics at all. It's subtly integrated with the EDS website (a smart touch), with tabs and links to key items on that website. While there are lots of external links within the posts, the blog layout itself is highly internal--there is no blogroll, reading list or any acknowledgement of relevant outside thought. That's telling, I think.

Offers RSS and atom feeds. They allow comments (moderated) but no trackbacks. The administrator is not identified. There are several different posters.

I liked that they published their blogging guidelines.

Links etc.: The blog is unclaimed in Technorati and is ranked #119,158. Technorati's information is a couple of weeks out of date.

blogs, corporate blogs, marketing, EDS