Ahhh…now it’s Apple’s turn to deal with the blog thing and the lack of employee blogs.
Apple doesn’t have a blogging policy as management feels that their current communication policy governs blogging. Robert Scoble states in his post, “They [the employees] just aren’t allowed to be spokespeople… So, they don’t feel empowered to talk about anything that they are working on…”
This may be a little off-point here, but why is it becoming a requirement that companies post everything about everything? Companies have a right, if not a duty, to maintain trade secrets.
I agree with Apple management that creating a specific blogging policy is not necessary. I believed I discussed this a long time ago..
It’s perfectly reasonable to expect that if you require employees to maintain confidentiality, that confidentiality should extend to all forms of communication, including blogging.
This may spur resentment among those employees who wish to blog about current projects and spur even more to create anonymous blogs, but the reality is that if an employee wishes to stay employed, the employee needs to follow all company policies.
“Anything they’re working on” can include projects that have gone public. Sure, you don’t spread trade secrets, and the Sun bloggers for example are quite good at holding back stuff, but what about the hardware guys explaining why the latest macbook was designed the way it is, and what the deal with the overheating is? It’d be much more transparent than the current black monolith Apple is, and customers would be a lot more informed.
But Apple doesn’t even allow this sort of blog, preferring to treat its customers (and even employees) like mushrooms – in the dark and fed shit. Compare this to http://direct2dell.com where Dell explains why various products aren’t shipping yet – Apple’s never explained why the new Xserve has been held up for months.