ON THE MOST UNEXPECTED BLOGGERS

LEFT FIELD

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a cool move by Walmart, allowing it's Buyers to blog about their experiences with vendors in the many categories that sell to Walmart. 

It represented a huge mind-shift in a corporate mind-set in how to think about sharing information with the public, that it otherwise would be inclined to never share.  The Walmart experiment may not last long, but the company deserves kudos for giving it a shot.

Well, Tracy Sheridan points out in a Twitter post, another unlikely organization that you'd NEVER think would allow it's employees to blog:

"Israeli secret agents are writing blogs about their lives in a bid to boost recruitment.

Shin Beth, Israel's equivalent of MI5, is allowing four agents to write blogs about their daily routines.

The bloggers will also respond to messages from members of the public, reports the Daily Telegraph.

The four agents, whose names are replaced by a single initial, appear in black silhouette on the site's home page..."

Here are some representative posts by some of these agents:

"Another blogger, Agent Y, agreed that the working hours in the Shin Beth were not too demanding: "You never work overtime, unless you really have to," he writes. "I rarely get home after 6:30pm."

Agent A, a software engineer, wrote: "I don't wear uniform, the office is not located underground. I don't walk around with an earplug all day long, and although this is extremely unfair, I do not get to place lightbars on the roof of my car."

Wow, if secret agents were blogging when I was growing up, life could have been very different indeed.

This is almost as clever a move as the US Army recruiting kids via free, down-loadable, and hugely successful video games.

Comments

[Alex Hammer]

We're reaching that proverbial tipping point where technology is intersecting with society and culture and influencing the way that we live our lives. While Apple's 1984 release (with great fanfare) was a historic event of similar type, blogging is a phenomenon of not (so far) time limited duration that is burgeoning over time and increasing in its effect(s).