in a corporate environment

Weblogs are a young and dynamic media type. The global blogosphere displays increasing influence, ongoing expansion and continuous cultural change. Blog mining techniques are the means for exploring this vibrant ecosystem. They stem from diverse origins including social network analysis, economic research, and network theory, and they are the basis for a myriad of services offered by ever more popular blog analysis engines. However, such service providers release little technical information in order to retain their competitive edge. ‘Reputation management’ is one particular service under development by several companies just now. It promises the analysis and active management of the public opinion on brand names and products through the targeted placement of information nuggets in the blogosphere. Increasingly, blogs are also employed in corporate environments for communication, organisational learning, and other purposes. The nature of corporate blogs and overall information environments remains to be fully explored, and the applicability of blog mining techniques in such localised ecosystems remains to be tested. However, a variety of exciting tools are conceivable for analysing the state of the blogging environment, for extracting and synthesizing information, and to actively shape communication patterns. All in all, the computational analysis of blogs and overall information environments is an exciting research area, and some commitment in this area may yield innovative techniques and effective tools.