Jonathan Schwartz: A top blogger sees end to blogging
SAN FRANCISCO—Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz rightly gets credit for pioneering the corporate blog as a tool to reach customers, employees, and others. But pretty soon the novelty of his methods will wear off, he predicted.
Context & Ripple Effects
Jonathan Schwartz built his reputation as the corporate blogging pioneer, using Sun's blogs to speak directly to customers and employees without press intermediaries — a playbook Microsoft's own star bloggers had already validated when a top Microsoft blogger resigned in 2006. By late 2007 the question was already circulating openly whether the format had peaked, with commentators asking whether blogging itself was dead. Schwartz now turning skeptic is notable precisely because he has the most to lose from the answer.
First-order effects
- Schwartz is effectively signaling that executive blogging as a differentiation strategy has a shelf life: once every CEO blogs, the channel stops conferring advantage on early adopters like him.
- Corporate communications teams watching Sun's example face an immediate question of whether to keep investing in executive blogs or shift attention to newer channels.
Second-order effects
- If the pioneer of the form declares it commoditized, laggard executives gain cover to skip blogging entirely, while competitors must find the next direct-to-audience channel to reclaim the attention Schwartz's blog once captured.
- Media and analyst relations shift as companies treat blogs less as news-breaking tools and more as routine infrastructure, pushing novelty value toward whatever platform comes next.
Third-order effects
- The pattern suggests a recurring cycle in tech communication: each direct-to-audience format (blogs, then presumably successors) follows a curve from differentiator to table stakes to afterthought, rewarding whoever migrates earliest.
- Schwartz himself modeled the migration — his eventual resignation announced via a haiku on Twitter made him the first Fortune 200 boss to do so, foreshortening the blog era he helped create.
The trend: Executive communication channels follow a rapid commoditization cycle, where each new direct-to-audience format loses its differentiation value almost as fast as pioneers like Schwartz can popularize it.