Follow Up on SilkBlogs

Last week, I questioned the feature set of SilkBlogs, an ‘enterprise blogging solution’. At the end of the post, I said:

If they’re savvy about marketing this product, somebody from SilkRoad will find this entry and reply to my criticisms.

Guess what? I got a call from Peter Quintas, Senior VP at Silk Road Tech. We had a decent discussion about their new product and what it had to offer. As it turns out, the product isn’t lousy (well, I haven’t used it, but it doesn’t sound lousy), but their MarComms is. I was basing my analysis on the available information, which was poorly structured and missed the crucial, true differentiators. These include:

• Version management. Presumably, when you update a weblog entry, the software keeps track of both versions. Handy in a corporate environment.
• Robust user management. With the existing consumer products, managing 10 users is pretty straightforward, but try managing 100.
• Document management and related content management system stuff.

If larger companies (like, 100+) start adopting blogs as internal information management and communication tools, then these are going to be important features. Again, this isn’t a plug of their product. I did appreciate Peter taking the time to contact me and clarify their positioning. Product vendors, take note! Now, Peter, what I want to see is a SilkRoads corporate news weblog and a product development weblog with RSS feeds, so that I can keep track of the company.

Speaking of blogs and the corporation, here are a few articles I’ve encountered recently:

• What’s up with blogging, and why should you care?
• Can Corporations and Blogging Co-exist?
• Dave Winer talks about online communities and occasionally takes Microsoft to task