I bet you think this post is about you

Warren_beattyThe other day, my new friend Tucker told me that I was a, "massive egomaniac."

Aren’t all bloggers?

What sort of ego do bloggers have? We spend the time and the energy and the money to post our opinions to the world, and we do it daily, or even hourly, often on topics on which we have no obvious authority…

Ego is the biggest reason that corporate blogging may be an oxymoron. Working for the man often means subsuming your ego to that of the organization, and blogging makes that difficult. It’s one reason that there have been high profile firings of corporate bloggers at places like Google. It’s hard to have two voices (the writer’s and the shareholders’) competing and often conflicting.

"Egomaniac", by the way, is the wrong word. I think that blogging requires you to have a healthy respect for your opinions, as well as the generous desire to share them with others. That’s not a negative social trait… If you don’t respect your opinions, who will? And if you don’t want to share the ideas you admire, you’re being selfish, aren’t you?