UPDATE: Roy Mark reports that IBM has about 9,000 internal bloggers, so far. Mark also reports that IBM has 320,000 employees worldwide. Other info: I also found IBM blogging policies IBM_Blogging_Policy_and_Guidelines.pdf (application/pdf Object) | Funny Spoof that was inspired by Jeanne Sesson | these external IBM blogs.

Tom Foremski reports an impressive new entry to the corporate blogging world. IBM joins Microsoft, Sun, Oracle and Macromedia (now Adobe) as, potentially, the single largest source of ‘blog evangelism’ in commerce.

If IBM engages just 10% of their employees to blog, they will easily surpass the number of all corporate bloggers – combined.

There are differing estimates of just how many bloggers exist from such in-house intitiatives.

This October 17, 2004 graph from David Sifry shows less than 5,000 corporate bloggers. MicrosoftWatch estimates that MS has over 600 bloggers, but the page is not dated.. I’ve seen estimates that Sun has 5,000+ bloggers. Anyone have better stats on the number of bloggers at each company? Love to hear from you.

Sifry’s four part series on blogosphere growth may be reached here:

Sifry’s Alerts: Oct 2004 State of the Blogosphere: Corporate Bloggers
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Sifry recently released the updated powerpoint presentation of this info ( May 02, 2005).

Open the presentation in PowerPoint and double-click on the various graphs. The data associated with each is embedded. For instance, you’ll find: Weblogs Tracked by Technorati = 7500000, New Weblogs /Month = 1100000, New Weblogs / Day = 39286

Visit: MSDN Blogs | Sun Bloggers

Silicon Valley Watcher: Can blogging boost IBM’s revenues and reduce layoffs?
The computer giant is about to find out as it prepares to launch a massive corporate blog initiative
By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Early next week IBM will introduce the largest ever corporate blogging initiative in a bid to encourage any of its 130,000 staff to become online evangelists for the company.

The move comes on the heels of IBM’s most recent quarterly financial report, which missed Wall Street expectations and led to announced layoffs of 15,000, with more than 13,000 of those lost jobs in Europe. The company hopes blogging could help stem further losses if it can galvanize employees into an army of online evangelists for IBM’s products and technologies.

Employees will taught what blogging is, and they will be guided on what is appropriate blogging content. IBM has also set up a wiki, a simple technology that allows groups to collaborate on projects and share knowledge. Wikis are not as sophisticated as IBM’s Notes collaborative software, but they are making significant inroads within corporate departments where they sometimes displace the use of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

The goal is to help improve IBM’s competitive position in key IT markets by having more of its tech gurus participating in online communities and discussions.

Related posts: Blogdigger Track of Foremski’s post | Technorati Track | Nooked RSS Directory :: search for corporate RSS feeds | Joi Ito’s blog | “Plaxo Public Internet Communication Policy”.