Microsoft's blogger in chief, Robert Scoble, is to leave the company to be part of the management team for start-up media podcasting company, podtech.net.

Scoble's blog, Scobleizer, has been credited as a leading example of blogging technology being used by a big corporation to create business benefits.

Microsoft initially treated Scoble's trenchant criticisms of the company with alarm, but later came to see them as feedback that led to better products and services. Scoble would highlight areas that could be acted on before they became issues with larger groups of consumers.

It also had a PR side-effect, coming to paint a friendlier picture of Microsoft as more open and responsive.

Scoble denied that his departure was due to bad feeling with his immediate management team, rejected expense claims or that Microsoft wanted to clamp down on blogging.

"I'm not the only blogger at Microsoft," Scoble writes about his resignation. "There are about 3,000 of them here. They are not having the plug pulled on them."

Scoble has made a career out of promoting blogging as a corporate tool. The 41-year-old co-authored with Shel Israel a book, Naked Conversations, earlier this year.

It set-out the six "pillars of blogging" as: publishable, findable, social, viral, syndicable, and linkable. Read our review of the book.