Blog lifts mystery surrounding telecommunications projects

A corporate blog about the construction of a subsea fibre-optic cable has received 20,000 hits in less than four hours.

Since its official launch three weeks ago it has had over 40,000 hits, according to its creators Pipe Networks subsidiary, Pipe International.

The blog follows the construction of PPC-1, a $200 million subsea cable that will connect Australia to the telecommunications hub of Guam.

The Web site features the cable's construction through daily blog entries, documents, photographs, videos and an online progress chart.

Commenting on the flood of posts, the Brisbane-based company's managing director, Bevan Slattery, said the blog is a fundamental shift away from the mystery traditionally surrounding telecommunications projects.

"Visitors were astounded that a telecommunications company would post a blog on a project of this magnitude in such an open and honest manner," Slattery said.

"Our aim is for Pipe International to be the foremost site on submarine cables.

"The information contained on the Web site will cover the practical and technical aspects of the project; I believe we are the first company in the world to do this."

According to Technorati, which tracks nearly 70 million blogs on a daily basis, 120, 000 blogs are being created every day.

Wikipedia recently reached a milestone of 10 million entries while Forrester Research has released a report predicting the Web 2.0 market including blogs, wikis and social networks, will top US$4.6 billion by 2013.

This is a significant increase compared to this year as companies with 1,000 or more employees are expected to invest a total of $764 million.

The report identified "Web 2.0" as consisting of seven categories - blogs, mashups, podcasting, RSS, social networking, widgets and wikis.

Forrester analyst and author of the report, Oliver Young, said spending on Web 2.0 will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 43 per cent for the next five years.

Young said enterprises will eventually view these technologies the same as Office or Excel today.

At first glance, he said the $4.6 billion dollar estimate seems huge, but it accounts for less than one per cent of the enterprise software market.

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