Jeremiah Owyang

(Left: I took this picture of Shel Israel using my color selector feature my Canon SD600)

Last night during coffee after dinner, Blogging Jedi Master Shel expressed to us of his concerns with some situations of bloggers taking advantage of their power, or organizations fearing bloggers. When he talks, there’s usually great wisdom or a lesson to be learned, this was no exception.

These four instances of abuse of power by bloggers and those that were watching bloggers. I suspect this trend will continue, just as it does for politicians, journalists, and anyone who obtains power.

Blogger ethics call for being 1) Honest and fair, 2) Minimize Harm, and to 3) Be Accountable.

I would add that any blogger should try to add to the community, and give credit when appropriate. And yes, that means that A-list bloggers need to start linking out, interesting thoughts from Chris.

As we gain more power by having a louder voice, we need to maintain credibility, I remember last Monday at the Frost and Sullivan conference where one attendee told me “Blogs are just a bitch session”.

Today over lunch, I told my friends I’m careful not to blog about folks that might not already be on the web. What I say about them can quickly find it’s way up search results, impacting their personal brand. The same goes to companies that do wrong, a blogger with incredible page rank can quickly destroy a search marketing program. I blogged about him using his first and last name a while ago, and it’s the top search result in Google. Since employers are known for doing Google searches for new employees, this is power I must yield carefully.

I just created a new category called ‘ethics’, and this is my first post tagged to it, probably something I should have done a long time ago.