Fortune 500 Blog Project Call for Volunteers

In a previous post I made a passing reference to the Fortune 500 Blog Project, described on the wiki as follows:

The Fortune 500 Blog Project is an independent, volunteer-driven project to identify and evaluate public-facing corporate blogs owned and/or operated by Fortune 500 companies. Secondary purposes of this project include finding out to what degree Fortune 500 companies are using internal corporate blogs, and highlighting blogs that discuss Fortune 500 companies.

This ambitious project is maintained by two people who, judging by their blog posts, probably qualify as among the busiest people I know or know of, Easton Ellsworth of Business Blog Wire and Know More Media, and Teresa Valdez Klein of Blog Business Summit fame. I’m pretty sure they would both qualify for the Indefatigable Bloggers Award 2006, if there were such an award (who knows?).

According to a recent update, 43 of the Fortune 500 companies have been identified as being blogging companies.

This sort of information is invaluable for those of us who like to know what’s happening in the corporate blogosphere. But the project is maintained as a labor of love and the project leaders are calling for some more volunteers. In that regard, one of the clarifications I get from going to the project wiki was that this is not just a list of companies plus blog url. It is a sophisticated listing, designed to capture and regularly update a range of information – and some opinions – about each blog and help build a dynamic picture or map of what is happening.

Here is the list of what a volunteer on this project is invited to do:

1. Pick a Fortune 500 company. If someone has already picked that company, consider adding to their work.
2. Search the Web for any public-facing blogs by that company or its employees.
3. Analyze the company’s blog(s).
4. Publish your findings at your blog.
5. Link to your findings from this wiki. Examples of published research posts: General Electric and Ford.
6. Repeat this process for as many companies as possible!

Non-trivial tasks – and an interesting way to get an understanding of how the big corporates approach and implement blogging. There are currently 46 volunteers registered.