About.com tells me that the fifth anniversary gift is…wood. I’m not sure what to do with that, but what I do know is that five years ago this past February we posted our first external blog entry on our first external blog.
I’m proud to say I started the first blog at Cisco on the topic of High Tech Public Policy, and as Laura Ipsen, then the VP of Government Affairs (now SVP/GM of our Smart Grid Business Unit) stated in our first blog entry, entitled “Welcome,” the purpose of this medium is to interact and listen:
“Fundamentally, Cisco’s mission is to shape the future of the Internet by creating unprecedented value and opportunity for our customers, employees, investors and ecosystem partners.
(Government Affairs’) vision is to use this blog to share our staff’s knowledge and opinions about government policy, legislation and regulation and the environment in which it is created. Our global team members will be participating in this forum. We hope you find our blog useful and informative.
We invite you to post your feedback and questions. Above all, we hope that we can, in some small way, help you better understand the technology policies that are being talked about, debated and voted upon -- whether that is through our own postings or from discussions that are created on this site.”
This first blog entry started something of a trend at Cisco. We now have internal blogs “out the wazoo” (I believe is the technical term). And, we now have 16 “corporate blogs” that you can access on Blogs.Cisco.com. Topics range from High Tech Policy (our first blog), to corporate stuff (this one), to mobility, to collaboration, to Service Provider, to Security, etc.
Over the past five years, we have grown our social media presence, we have added a Cisco YouTube channel for the all-important medium of video, we have added a corporate @CiscoSystems Twitter account (actually MANY Cisco Twitter accounts), we have an active Cisco Facebook account and we are experimenting with other social media like Flickr, UStream and more. The net is that interacting with customers, investors, employees, partners and more is important to us. We want to be accessible. We want to talk….and, more importantly, we want to listen.
So, while an early highlight for me was being mentioned by the Wall Street Journal in the same breath as Mark Cuban, Richard Edelman, Bob Lutz and Jonathan Schwartz a year after I started the first Cisco blog, the real highlight is interacting with tens of thousands of people a day using these social media. It started innocently enough five years ago and I have no doubt that it will only be more important over the next five years.
Here is that Wall Street Journal graphic from April 2006. 
Congratulations on your Wood (chortle) anniversary. It’s been a great journey, and so glad I was there to help in the beginning.
Wood you believe it – five years of Cisco blogging ! Happy Anniversary from all the Computer Repair team in Bournemouth. See you in another 5 years time.
I have been a great fan of your blog since the time i saw it which was 2 years back.Congratulations on your Fifth anniversary. I am looking forward to reading more great posts.
Nice one Adrian.Happy anniversary Cisco Blogs! Is it going to be Candy or Iron next year?
Congratulations Cisco blogsGreetings from Portugal
Congrats on 5 years! That’s a long time in ‘net years. That’s some great press you got there over the years too. Keep up the good work!
You are very much to be congratulated, I’d say. Starting out and then consistently delivering quality is not easy.Gary
It’s nice to see that there are indeed a few figureheads out there publishing high quality content for the sheer benefit of letting a little bit of the public eye into their internal happenings and processes. It really opens up the company and there is no better company to lead this endeavor than Cisco.
Congratuletions for the five years. You have a very nice blog, i like it.
This is a great blog to gain knowledge! Thanks and keep up the good work!
Congratulations! Keep up the good work and definitely keep the posts coming!
That’s impressive! I can only hope that I’ll get to 5 years…Andy
Congratulations on your anniversary…From England.
Congratulations on reaching 5 years – Best of luck for the next 5!
Wow, five hears is just forever in internet time. May you have another five more! Congrats!
Congratulations on your 5 anniversary. You have very informative blog. I have been your fan almost 2 years.
Congrats on 5 years happy aniversary
Congratulation Cisco Blog
Apologize for my belated greetings.Congraturations on the 5th anniversary. That’s surely a quite long journey for a company blogger. I am very much into Cisco latest technology innovations and am a frequent yet an avid visitor to your blog. Keep up the good work.
I would like to say congratz to cisco on the 5 years running time of there blog.
Congratulations, I am a proud subscriber of this blog too and a shareholder, I bought at $15! Thanks a mil!
Congrats for the 5th anniversary Cisco Blog!
About.com tells me that the fifth anniversary gift is…wood. I’m not sure what to do with that”"How about “”knock on wood”" in celebration of your 5th year anniversary? Congrats…and thanks for your hard work and diligence in providing us these blogs.”
Congrats on the long run of blogging – if only more companies would take it more seriously.
Forget wood. Let’s get to the good stuff–like diamonds and silver…lol. For those of us out here with Cisco shops, we appreciate all the hard work and efforts here. Keep it going!
Congrats on the fifth anniversary!Cisco is definitely going in the right direction regarding the whole social media thing
Keep up the good gear in the next 5 years!
I congratulate them for a year are undoubtedly some of the best blog about CISCO, greetings!
Congrats on this milestone. Keep up all the great work!
Congratulations cisco blogs on completing 5 years from India.
Congratulation with the 5 years from Copenhagen, Denmark
Congrats…wish you another great 5 years to come.G
Congratulations cisco blogs on completing 5 years.
That is a great achievement. Blogs became a must for every organization to implement. They are great for company news, discussions on the industry and interacting with visitors. We operate a 100% cisco network for our Dedicated Servers, and I must say that cisco equipment is absolutely amazing.”
Congrats John for all your years of success here at the cisco blog. I have read all the other blogs in that list, and none come close to the influence of Cisco. (Save Cuban for his controvery haha)
5 years of great success! keep up the great work guys!
Congrats on completing 5 years..continue blogging and keep on sharing interesting tidbits.
Congratualations and happy 5th anniversary
Congradualations on your 5th anniversary, from London, UK
5 Years, congratulations! I’ve been a cisco fan much longer than that, but that was a fact I didn’t know. Good to hear. But wood? Yeah I dunno about wood. setup a PO box and we can all mail in one piece of wood from our back yard or neighbourhood, or in my case the beach.
congratulations and may always be successful
Your blog is also very interesting, very calming effect just reading it. Will spend more time with certain areas. Well done and good luck with your work.
It’s really late to say Congrats to the Cicso blog. But, I think better late than never. Since, all post in this blog contain useful information for newbie on Cisco like me.