GM’s Smallblock Engine blog shuts down tomorrow after exactly one year, perhaps the first highly-publicized Fortune 500 blog to bite the dust. This sounds like a natural death. It was an event-driven blog, created for the 50th anniversary of the Corvette’s small-block engine. And the party is over. Makes sense. (Dave Hill, chief engineer of the Corvette, is also retiring which kind of wraps it up nicely.)
You could say it created a category for corporate blogs: event-specific and time-limited. It never got a huge number of comments from readers. But that’s OK too. Remember, a blog is just a tool. Use it anyway you want as long as you make it a good read, you’re honest and a bit of passion shows through.
Addendum: in April 2005, halfway through the year, the GM folks blogged about whether or not to turn the smallblock engine blog into a powertrain blog. A number of commenters said “oh, yes please do!” But one guy left an astute remark:
“Keep to one topic… don’t try to take on too much in one blog.”
And history… Rick Bruner of Business Blog Consulting crowed when the Smallblock blog launched in October 2004:
“This is big: the biggest car company in the world now has a blog.”