Fortune 500 Corporate Blogs: Corporate Blog Selection Criteria

The following criteria was used to define blogs associated with Fortune 500 companies as ‘corporate’ blogs. It was created specifically for my thesis research and may be one of many reasons why data on the number of companies with blogs or the number of blogs presented on this blog differs from other sources:

General

  • All blogs published by companies (including all fully or partially-owned subsidiaries) that appeared in the Fortune 500 list of companies published by Fortune magazine on May 5, 2008 were included. Where companies published multiple blogs, all blogs were included.
  • All blogs published on corporate websites or corporate-sponsored websites were included regardless of the roles and responsibilities of blog authors.

Employee Blogs

  • Blogs published on non-corporate sites by employees were included if the name and role of the employee were listed on the blog AND blogs contained visible corporate endorsement such as company logos or incoming hyperlinks from corporate websites that promoted employee blogs.
  • Employee blogs published on non-corporate websites and not containing visible signs of endorsement were excluded as personal blogs regardless of the role or seniority of authors or blog topics.

Corporate Disclaimers

  • Corporate disclaimers stating that the opinions published in blogs entries were those of authors and not affiliated with the company were not used to exclude any blogs from the list. These were present on many blogs, including those published on corporate websites.

Media Blogs

  • Blogs published under media brands such as national, regional and local newspapers, television networks and other professional media brands were excluded as news and editorial content rather than corporate blogs.

Inactive Blogs

  • Blogs that contained no posts for the three months prior to the study window of July and August 2008 were excluded as ‘inactive’. Blogs containing at least one entry in the three months prior to the study window were counted even if these blogs contained published no entries during in the study window.

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