So much to read - so little time to really absorb - and even less time to blog!  Some interesting links /stories /posts /reviews /analyses i have been studying over the last 10 days or so in the areas of corporate blogging, the merging of weblogging with tools like IM/forums/wikis etc to make them more 'conversational', and social networks :

On corporate blogging :

1. A "healthier" NY Times article on 'Blogs in the Workplace'. Thanks Allan, for the link (he's away at the Supernova conference - i am so envious !) and Stuart for his review on it. I like these thoughts expressed in the article :

But a growing number of businesses, government organizations and educational institutions are using Web logs to manage and improve the flow of information among employees. These blogs, not accessible to the public, typically allow many people to contribute entries that can be read by others in the organization.  It may be too soon to tell whether the corporate blog will emerge as a genuinely useful tool for business communications or simply another way for bores and blowhards to blather. But a growing circle of adopters, like Mr. Tang, swear by their blogs.

and :

"People are going to the blogs every day as a source for news," Mr. Jarvis said. But, he added, "I am disappointed in the tool," because the hoped-for exchange of ideas among departments has not spontaneously developed. "You need specific goals," Mr. Jarvis said.

On making blogs more conversational thru merging IM and forums and wikis with weblogging :

2. 'All the new kids on the blog - At tolerant Microsoft, some wonder when journals will
cross line' - thanks John, for the link.  Here's a nice comment - "The relatively informal nature of blogs can make them an effective way for companies to communicate, said Rebecca Blood, a San Francisco-based weblogger and author of "The Weblog Handbook." "It's not a press release, and it's not marketese," Blood explained in an interview. "It's someone talking about real things in a real voice."

3. Five Key Questions About Business Blogs. E-mail marketing outfit MarketingProfs.com has published an article on business blogging geared to the e-mail marketer. Little new here to those who are well-versed in the blogoshpere, but it is an interesting look into the minds of those who have, until now, relied on e-newsletters and other e-communications as their primary communications vehicles.

[...] Put it this way: scarcely 10 years ago you might have asked, “Will email replace the phone, fax and postal mail as the preferred means of business communication?” Of course, we exclaim in hindsight. So might it go with blogs. [More...] - [via Terry Frazier of b.cognosco]

On the merging of weblogging with tools like IM/forums/wikis etc to make them more 'conversational'

1.  More on merging IM and Blogging. IM Planet has an article on merging IM with weblogging: "Given the popularity of instant messaging, we see it as a way to bring in a lot more people to blogging," said MindSay co-founder Adam Ostrow. "Most people have a friend who blogs but might not know how to do it. We think we can really open it up to a much larger audience. People like using instant messaging, it's very convenient ... and it's in more than 40 percent of American households. We see an opportunity to bring blogging more into the mainstream."

Recent entrants in the IM+weblogging world include BloggerBot, MindSay and Tipic. [Corante: Social Software]

Now this is interesting !  I have two friends with whom i chat with regularly on IM - one's in Calcutta and the other's in the middle-east.  Both of them are up on all the tools IM provides - yet the moment i mention blogging to them they withdraw saying they're not 'techies'.  I've been prodding them to try it - by telling them that i'm no techie either - that a weblog is just a space or playground that can encapsulate all the discussions we have on IM, the thoughts, views and links we so often exchange, the prototying of ideas that we play with - and that it can have a much wider audience.  One of them is trying it out - he's asked me not to 'reveal' his url yet - maybe next week !  He's quite excited about comments he gets :).  Aparna - you listening, girl?

2. Phil Wolff makes a prediction - (thanks Lilia for the link) : 

"The vendors who dominate messaging will shape blogging. AOL and Microsoft have fat clients, web clients, and chat clients. Watch them:

1. Bring blogging into their messaging family.
2. Absorb blogging user and group digital IDs into their identity mechanisms.
3. Offer faceted blogs (everyone sees just what they're intended to see and not what they don't want to see) using digital ID. You're not part of their ID world? No facets.
4. Push blogging into all their customer touch points (voice, SMS/iMode, handhelds, desktop software, etc.)
5. Fold blogging community servers (the Technoratis and Popdexes) into email and search servers.
6. Offer tools for good citizenship (i.e. censorship, filtering) via community servers.

3. Stuart points to some neat links on conversational blogging in his post - More Forums and Blogs , with an introductory para which says : I feel there's a ready interest in making blogs more conversational.  So I find it particularly frustrating when contributing to different forums and then finding myself exhausted and too tired to sum it up for my blog.  At that point I feel like I'm suffering all this information is being posted to separate places - different communities and my retrieval is difficult. He makes an appeal here - Enable other MT blogs so that when I leave a comment on their blog... it is automatically e-mailed to my blog when I check the right comment box and thus posted (title comment on VK's xxx entry) and saved in a category "comments on other blogs" with sub-categories by blog.  Then I can go commenting and feel I'm adding broader value at the same time.  It would generate more thoughtful comments, and enable me to share both more personally and broadly at the same time. It would also keep a record for me of comments I've made on other blogs.  Something sadly lacking today. 

On social/business networks and communities :

1. Marc invited me to Ringo - i joined it - i like the interface - it has a clean look-feel about it and a nice messaging system.  I'm not sure though how it would provide any real value to me that i cannot get from the connections i've made through blogging and through Ryze. 

2. Ryze is undergoing changes - i liked the FOAF adds earlier - though am a little confused why i should want to see 'selected' friends of friends and 'newest' friends of friends - now it has new privacy settings.  Way to go !  I just wonder what Adrian Scott's business model is - seeing how Indians are joinng the network, mostly free memberships !

3. I tried Sona Matchmaker too - its an out-and-out dating community - i signed up to test it a couple of weeks ago - and got a single friend to join there to test it with me - although its easy to put up a profile, its quite boring, a bit dead  ... nothing happens there ! Takes ages to load - and has a fairly tedious messaging system.