Being in downtown Seattle tonight reminded me of a great night out many years back with some old pals in Seattle. We had several drinks in a great bar on 1st Avenue and got chatting with a dude at the bar. When we asked him what he did he proclaimed he was a Social Navigator. A great line that we still laugh about.
That got me thinking about the social networking scene that I'm now a part of and the recent post by Jens Alfke about the lack of blogging at Apple and his departure. His post is extremely well written and this part really stuck out for me
It’s deeply ironic: For a company that famously celebrates individuality and Thinking Different, Apple has in the past decade kept its image remarkably impersonal. Other than the trinity who go onstage at press events — Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive, Phil Schiller — how many people can you name who work for Apple? How many engineers?
I was discussing this topic only last week with a PR executive in London. Apple has a very different approach to communications where it's very much command and control by Steve Jobs. I think it works very well for them though what happens when Steve eventually leaves is another question. The whole approach is centred around el Jobso.
Microsoft on the other hand manages to have something in the region of 5000+ bloggers and very minimal control. Literally the internal mantra about blogging is "blog smart". There is a blog policy somewhere but I've never read it and suspect the same is true for most of our bloggers. It just boils down to using your noggin on what you can share and what you can't. I've noticed I blog less at the moment as I'm involved in lots of stuff I can't talk about. It'll ebb and flow but there is no hit squad policing our bloggers. The effect of Microsoft's blogging is a subtle and ongoing shift in perception about the company and its employees I believe. On the whole it's positive from what I have seen.
Oracle has a similar band of bloggers and social networkers and one area they seem to be more innovative then Microsoft is their use of Twitter - or at least they're more visible and organised. Dennis pointed me towards Oracle's wiki of Tweeters and their sort of Digg mashup. We have some similarly cool assets such as Channel's 8, 9 and 10.
So back to Apple. Will they ever have bloggers on an official basis? I doubt it whilst Steve is around. As their market share is on the rise I think their customers will expect more and more interaction and their lack of blogging will become an Achilles heel. I may be wrong and I honestly hope they don't start blogging - they're blog design would no doubt put mine to shame but more importantly, whilst they're doing so much else right, I'm happy to see them getting this part wrong. IMHO of course.
[update] Frank X Shaw who heads the PR account at Waggener Edstrom for Microsoft has a related thread.
Could part of Apples lack of bloggers be that they're more consumer focused where leaks, real or otherwise, in the short term at least are potentially more commercially dangerous? (two adjectives in one sentence...oh yes). Like you I've always wondered about the real reason for Apples lack of public faces...is it as you hint 'cos El Jobs wants to keep a tight reign on things!
My POV is that this is Steve related almost 100 percent. There was a time when apple was way more responsive and way more aggressive in getting its word out broadly; in a lot of ways, Guy Kawasaki was in a lot of ways one of the first tech bloggers....but didn't get branded as such!
Having attended technical and executive level presentations from both Microsoft and Apple I too ahve seen the divide in blogging culture. When Apple were asked about posting the technical seminars so that those who had attended could have notes to recap and refresh ideas the comment from Apple was a categoric "No" because that's what Apple in the US says! The enlightened approach from Microsoft reveals far more about the real openness culture of the organisation and the fact that it has learnt from previous mistakes and siezed the opportunity to engage more proactively with those who it seeks to court as customers (be they existing or potential customers).
MS does at least "eat its own dogfood" whereas Apple appears to be very shy of using its own technologies to deliver content to those who have to influence senior IT executives - without at least that backing then Apple will continue to only have a niche market. For MS that can only be good.
We used Twitter successfully at Oracle OpenWorld, in conjunction with eventtrack, a side-project of Craig Cmehil of SAP.
Coverage if you're interested:
http://oracleappslab.com/2007/11/08/cool-stuff-is-happening/
http://oracleappslab.com/2007/11/08/twitter-openworld-and-more/
eventtrack
http://eventtrack.info/
Oracle Tweeters
http://oracleappslab.com/2008/01/05/oracle-tweeters/
The other benefit of blogging apart from getting the message out, it is getting the message in.
If you check out the Oracle tweeters and bloggers, you'll see a mix of Oracle employees and customers.
I also had an interesting experience when presenting down at Google of being recognized from my blog, after I had just
posted a light hearted post taking a dig at Google.
http://davidhaimes.wordpress.com/2007/12/08/comparing-google-and-oracle/
hi jake - we used twitter at Mix07 and it was very cool. there was even a Twitter screensaver that we used during the conference that was terrific.
I think you guys are doing great stuff...we should get together some time and discuss all this :)
Steve: You should give Craig's eventtrack a try for Mix08. His sole purpose for building it was for conferences. He blogs at http://craig.cmehil.com and has a day job at SAP.
Let's chat sometime. Drop me a note through email jake dot kuramoto at oracle dot com or hit me up on twitter, http://twitter.com/jkuramot
thanks Jake - will check it out and see you on Twitter
Jake - where and how can I play with Eventtrack?
At http://eventtrack.info you'll find details.
Basically, you follow @eventtrack and create an event, e.g. mix08. Then tweet a @eventtrack start*mix08 and it records your tweets into a stream, along with everyone else's who has started that same event, no need to tweet @ anyone. The tweets can be consumed via RSS or on the web page, so it gives a semi-live tweet stream of the event.
Been following the comments and decided to write up a small blog to give more detail into @eventtrack if you are interested.
http://craig.cmehil.com/2008/01/2008-and-why-i-been-so-quiet-lately.html