Ed: I write for [the Lotus Site] to put a human voice on the Lotus organization. Our initial objective with the Lotus weblog was to have an informal way to address market "buzz," whether that be new releases, market dynamics, competitive activities, or anything else where a formal press announcement or white paper would just be too much. I've been pretty happy with that format.

DominoPower: So how about edbrill.com?

Ed: I write edbrill.com because there's more to the story. As a former IT professional who slid over to the vendor side, I can relate to some of the hype versus reality situations that go on in our industry every day. Further, I enjoy what I do for a living very much, and I'd like to be able to share all of that (not just the pure business aspect) with the larger Lotus community. It has also become a bit of an outlet for sharing information on travel and exploration, and I've met some really great people through the blog.

DominoPower: Are there any downsides to blogging for you?

Ed: The time commitment is the biggest one. For my personal site, I worry almost daily about providing "quality" content that will continue to build a following. A lot of weblogs have a bunch of filler junk that nobody really cares about. I've watched my readership rise steadily in the year I've been writing, and I've adapted based on the feedback over that time. The other downside to blogging is the transparency; I have a little bit less privacy now. I'm willing to trade that off (for the most part) but I've scaled back writing about very personal subjects.

DominoPower: What do you think the future of Domino blogging will be?

Ed: I think we've passed through the initial startup phase and are somewhat into the shakeout. There are too many people writing only incrementally-valued content about Lotus technology. We either need to expand beyond Lotus to all of IBM software or otherwise do something which continues to focus the efforts. There are already a lot of dead blogs based on Domino or about Lotus, and I suspect that will continue.

Interview with Carl Tyler
Next up on the interview block was Carl Tyler, the CTO of Instant Technologies, maker of instant messaging products that connect IBM Lotus Instant Messaging (formerly Sametime) and Microsoft technologies. You can read his blog at http://www.instant-tech.com/blogs/ctyler.nsf.

DominoPower: What prompted you to start blogging?

Carl: Well I started it to drive more traffic to the Instant Technologies website, and to give people ideas of what we're working on before we do it. As time has gone on, I have received feedback that people prefer it when I don't shamelessly plug the company, and talk about more personal stuff or my views on things happening in the IM market.

DominoPower: What do you see as the major benefits to blogging?

Carl: The benefits have actually been different to what I expected. We did see the blog driving hits to our business website, but the benefits for me personally are that I have heard from a number of classmates or old work colleagues from 10+ years ago that I had lost touch with, who had come across the blog one way or another. Another personal benefit is that my family in the UK can actually stay up to date on everything I'm doing (this also has its downside.)