When the guy has a new job, I wonder if you could let us know the name of the company that fired him. Then we can all assess the quality of judgement of the PR people there. The question they should have asked themselves is - did the guy do a good job on the ScobleShow? Simply mindlessly following "process" isn't the way to win.
As for Microsoft thinking being "secret" is the key to Apple's PR success, they should think a bit harder. As in the previous paragraph, this just sounds like more mindless obsession with "process" to me.
The point is... Making exiting new products and having people right at the top of the organization that know how to sell are the keys to Microsoft getting lots of great PR. That's it.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
If I get permission from the guy I'd love to share it.
I thought the interview was interesting. It wasn't the most interesting thing I've ever done, but it was interesting to have the chat I did. I didn't hear anything that hurt the company in my eyes. I think it was a "rules are rules" kind of decision, not one made based on harm or goodness.
searchengines
· 2 years ago
Understandably, there HAS to be some control - only because - just imagine if any employee was allowed to say anything, anytime to the media.
In the case of a large firm - this would be a PR and Financial nightmare - consuming extra resources to undo misinformation or information by disgruntled employees.
PR departments are hired for a reason. Perhaps, they could have given him another chance - but in this era of many qualified people competing for relatively few jobs, they might err on the side of caution depending on how irreplaceable an employee is.
Paul Cooper
· 2 years ago
I'd say that simply keeping stuff secret isn't the only reason Steve Jobs gets lots of good PR - I don't remember how secret they kept it, but the original iPhone, that horrible Motorola thing, didn't get much PR buzz. Because it was a rubbish, neutered product, which failed.
Simply keeping the next version of Windows secret isn't going to make it good - if you want to copy Steve the real trick is to make Vista+1 good and release details in a controlled trickle (if you compare to how Apple handled Leopard).
The tricky balancing act for Steven Sinofsky is that while Apple are fairly good at keeping tight lipped about Mac OS X (and other products) and building great buzz and PR, his other main competitors in the OS market, Linux & (Open)Solaris are at the other end of the spectrum, and completely open and transparent about where they're going. And they get great buzz and PR too, although not necessary the same breathless stuff the iPhone is getting, but that is hardly a fair comparison - for example it seems unchallenged in the media that ZFS is the best filesystem in the world and Apple should / will adopt it sometime in Leopard.
anona
· 2 years ago
"it’s a learning company."
They studied the iPod for 5 years and they came up with Zune? That's some learning.
Go back and watch Ballmer's video where he mouths off on how expensive the iPhone is, etc. That's learning?
When MSFT shuts off the spigot of FUD to IT that's so used to it by now, they are going to have a harder time competing. You see, the MSFT biz model is built on commoditization of pretty much everything but its own software. Vertical integration a la Apple and secrecy won't work in that model. How many PlaysForSure bait and switch can MSFT pull on its own partners?
RBA
· 2 years ago
Wow.... Did he actually said something that shouldn't have been said, or they fired him simply for going to your show without consulting with them first? The former is understandable. The later should beg for another chance.
BTW - You can put me in your show. I'll fire our PR guys if they complain :-)
Simon Brocklehurst
· 2 years ago
@3 "there HAS to be some control...this would be a PR and Financial nightmare..."
Well, sure that has to be some control... but, the truth is that regular employees only rarely cause PR/financial damage to companies. Damage like that is almost caused by senior executives. Actually, Steve Jobs even joked about this in his recent D interview... "Apple is a ship that leaks from the top!"
Matt
· 2 years ago
@4, I think being a bit more secretive (especially at the early stage) is better off for the Windows team. I think the issue with Vista was (1) they kinda talked to early. They had all these features they wanted in, and at the end just couldn't get them. Right there is a lost promise for newer/better features. (2) There was almost too much insight and people just saw all the issue with it.
As for it being a "learning company". Do I think they should just be a learn-and-do company? No. At points you take chances, which is what the Zune was.
Stephane Rodriguez
· 2 years ago
Scoble said "Doing the kind of blogging that I was doing at Microsoft is much harder than it looks. You’ve got to have great relationships across the company to be able to do things like tell people they should be fired for not doing something, like I did at Microsoft, without being fired yourself."
Funny that you are still not admitting that you have been used and abused.
Having someone lone and lonely speak in the name of Microsoft brought a human touch. Everything you did was in Microsoft interest.
Last but not least, they look transparent, they aren't. An example of that is what's going on with Microsoft Office XML formats right now. The blogs are a covert fire and motion, while all the decisions are happening behind the scenes with Microsoft flying his evangelists left and right, sometimes hiring people all the way.
Mesmerized
· 2 years ago
I’m an aspiring PR person, and reading your blog helping me understand the industry in different light. I also truly like reading your blog as it keeps me extremely updated; as I have just started working for a web2.0 consulting company (which is way off my comfort zone).
The difference between Iphone and the next version of Windows is the the world isn't dependent on the Iphone, where as 90% of the worlds desktop computers are dependent on Windows. If Microsoft keep quite on the next version of Windows then it will slow the take up rate which won't be good for business. Would you move your 20,000 corporate users onto an OS that's a secret. I think not.
warren
· 2 years ago
It's true, we developers do tend to tell the unvarnished truth. Why? Because software either works, or it doesn't - we're well aware of how easy it is to get caught out in a lie or embellishment.
Lying about something when evidence to the contrary is in front of you is counter-productive at best, even if you don't get caught out straight away.
Lack of skill at explaining/demoing? Not necessarily so. Explaining to a layperson maybe, but if a dev can't explain what the product does, then what the hell are they doing working on it?!
Boring? Unprofessional? It depends on the person I guess. I think it's unfair to make that sweeping a generalisation about all developers. Maybe PR thinks that, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.
Of course PR probably doesn't want to know what developers think of them though... ;-)
Tom
· 2 years ago
Interesting post...
... although I would say Apple also gets a lot of PR because they are innovators in a somewhat stale technology landscape. Microsoft on the other doesn't innovate they copy, I mean "learn".
iPod... iPhone... what will be next?
Joe
· 2 years ago
Steven Sinofskys secrecy has nothing to do with Steve Jobs, it's alway been his style to keep thing secret. That's why I'm happy he's in charge of the Windows Division at Microsoft,unfortunatly for People that Make their living or a least draw attention to themsleves by covering Microsoft, this will put a damper on their activities, People such as Mary Jo Foley will just have to work harder at the negative spin.
Mark
· 2 years ago
At what point do we consider a video blogger "press". OK, it's clear that you have a press type role and a big audience, but there are plenty of other people pointing cameras around everyday and putting the content on a web site. How many people at the Vloggies would be able to get official press passes? Should you notify a person of your potential audience size before capturing them on video? Maybe the content is only seen by 10 people but they may be the most important in the industry.
The "press" landscape is changing. It's not so clean cut as implied by the Cult Of The Amateur. Maybe we should get people to wear trilby hats with a "press" card tucked in the band ;-).
Bill Dalsen
· 2 years ago
It's not about total secrecy. Jobs is uniquely secretive but twice tipped his hand in the past year to reveal AppleTV and the iPhone before they were finished products. In those cases, he released enough information to prepare the market for unexpected products but never enough information to satiate our curiosity. Jobs alone reveals what he must at the time he appoints.
Microsoft is like McDonald's. We know what to expect, where to find it, and we're not hanging on their next bun-and-beef mashup. That's not necessarily bad. But revealing the new, mysterious and hitherto under-wraps McTofu sandwich won't compel me to camp outside their stores, even if it incorporates some of the latest trends and sensibilities and sells a million in a moment.
Aruni
· 2 years ago
I think secrecy is only part of it. Jobs personality is quite different than Gates as anyone can easily tell from their recent D5 conference interview together. It also depends on how you measure success...is it PR or the bottom line...probably a combo of both! I co-write on the topic of success: www.babblesoft.com/articles.php.
I'd love to be on your show sometime! I only answer to myself since I'm the Prez/Founder and I can't fire myself although sometimes I wish that was an option. :-)
Chris
· 2 years ago
"Last night one of the people who’ve been on the ScobleShow (my video show) wrote me and told me he was fired for appearing on my show without PR permission."
They're afraid you're going to destroy their image. Or they could have been looking for a reason to fire him or her anyway and your show was their paydirt.
Nobody is perfect though, and I feel that the more people get to know you for better or worse, the better. Just look at Paris Hilton, Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell. All people who have sullied their respective company affiliations to no end with outrageous comments, but who have come out on top in the end.
JulesLt
· 2 years ago
Interesting - Apple's strategy works well for the consumer market, but possibly hurts them in business markets (apart from specific verticals like media production).
I'm not sure the MS development community would buy the same NDA restrictions as Apple's ADC members either. They work in a different marketplace - for instance Apple third party developers will be delivering Leopard only apps the day it ships, whereas it's pretty hard to find Vista enhanced apps, let alone Vista only ones. With pretty good reason - it took years for most PCs to switch to XP, whereas Apple OS updates spread almost as fast as the Flash player. Partly, of course, because of the third-party software market. Equally partly because Apple don't release updates of frameworks like Direct-X or .NET outside of OS releases.
Still, only announcing what you know you're going to deliver would be a starting point! That's the mess Apple got themselves into before the reverse merger with NeXT, and probably a good reason why Jobs seized control in the way he did - their reputation was in tatters at that point.
Actually it's interesting that Apple have a reputation for secrecy given that the 'Just one more thing' announcements are far fewer than the pre-announcements - but that in itself is good PR work. The iPhone, for instance, was pretty much revealed in patents in 2006.
daddydoodaa
· 2 years ago
Interview more small developers; ones that are in business for themselves. They have no PR department or they're the boss.
I find their stories very interesting.
Rock on!
rslux
· 2 years ago
There are literally thousands of people outside Apple who have Leopard right now -- anyone who went to WWDC walked out with a copy. Virtually none of them are talking either, which is actually more interesting than the fact that Apple runs a tight ship.
The wording of the NDAs that developers have to sign is part of it, but ultimately it's a more tribal thing that keeps the mouths shut and the torrents offline.
As someone posted out upthread, if all that Microsoft has learned from Apple is to talk less, then they are learning the wrong lessons (clearly, the Zune and Vista are excellent examples of what not to do).
As for the fired interviewee, that sucks. Good luck to him/her.
Companies have a responsibility to be transparent about what they are going to do, but also taking care concerning transparency about ideas that might get people focused in the wrong direction. With the large partner system some companies have you want to ensure that partners arent mislead or randomized with all the diferent ideas being brainstormed.
I was focused more on not blogging every idea that comes along. There is also the component of ensuring you have approval before you start having conversations about a subject.
Chris
· 2 years ago
"but ultimately it’s a more tribal thing that keeps the mouths shut and the torrents offline." http://www.newzbin.com/search/query/p/?q=leopar... http://thepiratebay.org/search/leopard/0/0/0 Wow.... Jobs better crack the whip a little harder. I just had a flash back to Pirates of Silicon Valley where the fictional Steve Jobs harassed 2 employees calling them clock punching losers.
PXLated
· 2 years ago
Robert...What happened to that old...Jobs should have a blog...Apple should be more transparent...mantra that one used to espouse?
Steve Sloan
· 2 years ago
Do we really have free speech if a company is allowed to fire an employee for speaking to the press? We may not send folks to jail for exercising their rights of free speech, we just deprive them of their ability to provide for themselves and their families. Is that really free speech?
Thank God I am not an at-will employee. And, thank God we have unions where I work. I wish more folks did.
Synthmeister
· 2 years ago
Yes, you are free to say anything you want, but your company is free to fire you any time they want.
Michael Maggard
· 2 years ago
MS has made fantastic promises time & time again about each new iteration of their products. Each and every time they fail to deliver. Sometimes by multiple versions with missed delivery dates of over a DECADE.
(There should be a website somewhere listing all of MS’s marketing promises year by year vs what they actually delivered, and when (if ever))
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me over and over and I’ve gotta be an idiot to keep listening to MS’s bullshit “roadmaps”.
Apple, until this last rev. they’ve kept it quiet, and OVER delivered each time. Even with the fanboy sites predicting outrageous things Apple has kept up.
With Leopard Apple stumbled–delayed, no apparent secret wow. But they acknowledged they spread themselves too thin and took the heat, did some damage control. MS just redefines the product and continues on blithely.
Seriously, anyone’s head roll at MS over WinFS? It was obvious they were over-promising and in the weeds, but MS kept claiming ‘til the day they re-aligned it, then later quietly dropped it. Someone’s career shoulda been holed for that, but not at MS.
As to being different markets, no, I think both MS & Apple serve developers as well as direct customers. The difference is Apple waits to deliver a product before selling it to developers, while MS sells it to developers with the promise they’ll deliver it.
Frankly I think MS succeeds entirely in spite of itsel and, aside from marketing & playing hardball, is likely the worst run business in the US. Looking at the money, the power, the brainpower, they’ve got, and what eventually gets shipped, it’s pitiable.
There’s a reason MS is so zealous about buying or crushing smaller competitors–because they’re hopelessly broken inside. Too many managers, too few negative feedback loops, byzantine decision making structures.
Apple isn’t a great counter-example, they flip from ADD to OCD and back again with their attention to developers, ongoing programs, even products. But on a budget a fraction of MS’s they continue to innovate and excel in ways MS can only envy.
John Ebbert
· 2 years ago
Harsh.. can't believe someone got fired. I take it this person didn't give anything away proprietary but merely participated in an open discussion about public info?
Seems to me someone blew an unnecessary gasket. I understand the need to control public facing messaging to a degree, though.
Sharpe
· 2 years ago
@11 One tactic expertly employed by Microsoft is FUD and vaporware. Vista was not the first product promising the moon and failed to deliver. Microsoft is pretty good at sabotaging their competitors by promising their next product will have the same features and then some. The customers who listen understandably want to postpone their purchase and stick with Microsoft solutions. Whether the promise becomes a vaporware, that's another story. The most important thing is to keep competitors from getting Microsoft's customers.
Many people has been burned by Microsoft's FUD and vaporware and they are developing an immunity. They are no longer effective. Just look at the reaction to Microsoft post-Vista. Can Microsoft change tactics and compete fairly? That is an interesting question, but I have to say no, unless they get rid of Ballmer and the other hacks. If they do, then they'll have a good chance reforming.
Thomas
· 2 years ago
@30 Michael Maggard and @32 Sharpe - The correct level of transparencey is an issue that Microsoft is dealing with.
In the past Microsoft has been transparent when it was inappropriate. As I said in my post earlier #25, throwing out all the ideas you have isn't being transparent it is being randomizing. In a company of Microsoft's size with the large partner system we have, these ideas get discussed and partner's take this as the direction we are going.
There obviously needs to be a level of responsibility when starting conversations about ideas and concepts when they aren't formed enough to know if they are solid ideas, or just floating concepts.
Don
· 2 years ago
The problem with MS' PR right now is not that they are too open and simply being more secretive is not going to solve their problem.
The real difficulty is that they use PR in an attempt to stifle competition via FUD, then don't come through with what they promise. How many features were promised for Vista (in order to compete with software that offered such features) that were dropped? How much of their innovation was egregious copying?
The real problem is that MS' PR is simply untrustworthy. If developers operate on MS' promises, they lose. If developers come up with something great, MS claims they'll have something better, putting their competitor out of business and then releasing either garbage or nothing at all.
So what can MS do? 1) Cease FUD. 2) Not promise more than they can deliver. 3) Not hype crap. 4) Not seek to destroy competition through their monopoly, but overcome them through true innovation.
Both Vista and Apple's Leopard are evolutionary steps--not revolutions. MS promised much and delivered little. Apple promised little and seems like it will deliver more. That, IMO, is the real secret of Apple's success.
Dave
· 2 years ago
back to the fired employee in question. Not knowing who that person might have been in a situation where the folks above had their finger on the exit button. Maybe they were just looking for an excuse to fire them.
Chris
· 2 years ago
"So what can MS do? 1) Cease FUD. 2) Not promise more than they can deliver. 3) Not hype crap. 4) Not seek to destroy competition through their monopoly, but overcome them through true innovation."
I don't think it's pure FUD. Microsoft employees work on a lot of projects that they think will become new products but ultimately amount to nothing. When they tried to copy open source and become more community based, when gotdotnet and C9 opened. They started leaking their internal projects and making all sorts of claims that they would not deliver on.
Apple never tried to copy open source because they were never threatened by Linux the way Microsoft was and is. So they kept the normal product cycle of secrecy until the product was near completion.
Just look at stuff like Singularity. It's too slow, and a failed idea. They marketed it like it was going to be the next Linux. In reality it amounted to a lot of wasted R&D.
Apple puts up or shuts up. MS used to be the same way before Linux and Richard Stallman scared the daylights out of them. Then they tried to copy Google. When was the last time you went to Circuit city and saw boxed Google products? Failed plan, failed implementation. Failed company with no good direction. Goodbye. Soon.
Jim Priest
· 2 years ago
Seems to me more secrecy and less innovation go hand in hand. They want to keep things secret so you'll go stand in line and buy it before you realize it doesn't live up to the hype (insert MS Vista/Leopard/iPhone reference here)...
I'll continue to enjoy the non-secret, no broken promises (because no on is dumb enough to promise anything) and I can't complain anyway because it's free world of Ubuntu/Linux.
Tankko
· 2 years ago
Yeah. Companies don't usually fire good people on the spot like that. Don't discount that fact that this might have been a "last straw" for the guy. Maybe he is a loose cannon and they were just tried of dealing with him. Maybe he had been told very explitily to not talk to people. Maybe this is the 5th time he's been told.
I'm not trying to be mean, but let's try and step back and ask "what really happened?".
It's easy for employees to get sympathy from people about "being fired" when the whole story is not told.
This happen to one of my co-workers. He was one of the worst people we had. The company let him go and didn't go blabbing about why he was fired, so he was free to say anything he wanted (and he did).
Eric Eggertson
· 2 years ago
Most public relations people I know are happy to put "subject matter experts" in touch with media or others, when the time is right.
Just as most companies have tight financial controls in place to keep from getting ripped off and to keep employees from temptation (or from being wrongfully suspected of financial shenanigans), most smart companies have policies in place about who talks to the media or outside groups, and what they say.
For publicly owned or regulated companies, it protects the employee from saying something that could inadvertantly cause problems with regulators, or with the stock price. Far better to have somebody vet the interview who knows about Sarbanes-Oxley and any other complex rules on public disclosure of info.
There's plenty of media training and public speaking training available to help middle managers or people lower down the food chain handle themselves when talking publicly about information that hasn't been officially disclosed. The training also helps them choose better ways to communicate complex concepts (simplify, use examples, don't over-explain).
Management usually doesn't want everyone running around sharing information without any warning, and without any limits.
PR policies are in place to protect the company, but they're also in place to protect the employee.
Tom O'Leary
· 2 years ago
Funny, I thought that in this new world of work we wanted our employees to be buzz agents for our company, to talk at length about the wonderful things that we're doing, etc.
Perhaps akin to the recent Bloggersgate fiasco where bloggers' quotes appeared in a Microsoft ad - the use of a simple disclosure would suffice Corporate PR departments without killing the buzz of your workforce ("I should say that my comments in this interview do not necessarily represent the views of my company...")
Making your workforce scared to talk to anyone about your company jeopardizes the most important marketing tool that you have. Firing them for doing so certainly won't endear them, or anyone who they talk to afterwards, to your brand either.
And you can rest assured that a man fired for talking positively about his work will make it his work to talk negatively about his company thereafter. Talk about flipping the funnel the wrong way!
All the best
Tom
Tom O'Leary
· 2 years ago
Funny, I thought that in this new world of work we wanted our employees to be buzz agents for our company - to talk at length about the wonderful things that we're doing, etc.
Perhaps akin to the recent Bloggersgate fiasco where bloggers' quotes appeared in a Microsoft ad - the use of a simple disclosure would suffice Corporate PR departments without killing the buzz of your workforce ("I should say that my comments in this interview do not necessarily represent the views of my company...")
Making your workforce scared to talk to anyone about your company jeopardizes the most important marketing tool that you have. Firing them for doing so certainly won't endear them, or anyone who they talk to afterwards, to your brand either.
And you can rest assured that a man fired for talking positively about his work will make it his work to talk negatively about his company thereafter. Talk about flipping the funnel the wrong way!
All the best
Tom
Kris Reiche
· 2 years ago
'Learning" Company. Try 'copying' company
Steve
· 2 years ago
It's simple really. By keeping things secret, you can leak out just enough information to keep buzz about a product. But, you don't have to commit to features or timelines. In doing so, when you deliver the product, you appear to have hit your mark on features "on time", etc. In doing so, when you do say something, you carry more credibility.
MS has used FUD to it's advantage in the early years. They'd promise products in very early stages of development to counter what their competitors were already shipping in hopes of keeping people from buying their competitor's products. The problem is, when you miss on a promise, you lose credibility. Regardless of we think of Vista as an actual product today, Microsoft has suffered a serious credibility issue with regard to the development of this product. When you consider what was delivered with out long it took to deliver it and how much money was spent on developing it, coupled with how many features were eventually withdrawn, it's an outright embarassment.
Sriram Krishnan
· 2 years ago
Robert - I find it ironic that you're advocating the exact opposite of what blogs.msdn.com and Channel 9 have done and are doing.
You're telling us in this post that transparency is a bad thing. Which is the reverse of what you've been advocating all these years.
Bess
· 2 years ago
Gee... You are taking my business office space across the street?
You want to get developers to chat. Get them to talk about stuff they hack outside work at playhouse like our.
Amanda Chapel
· 2 years ago
The Naked Conversations idea was beyond naive.
John Davis
· 2 years ago
Of course, Apple does also happen to put out some truly great products. That might be a bigger factor than secrecy. On the other hand, Microsoft, like the boy that cried "Wolf," makes so much noise about things that don't happen - Cairo, for example - that it's lost credibility.
There is also the point that many of its products suck. I didn't notice anyone camping outside stores to get the first edition of Vista, but I do know more than ten people who installed it, then wiped their hard disks and went back to XP. This kind of thing tends to dampen one's enthusiasm somewhat.
I think the crux of the matter is that Microsoft lacks a leader. Gates has the charisma of a chartered accountant and Ballmer is so full of BS ("Zune has 25% market share,") that the only people who would follow him would do it out of curiosity. "Where the hell's he going?"
MS products are the products of committees. After everybody and his dog has put their spoke in, what you end up with is about as exciting as supermarket music. You can't be all things to all people and have any originality.
Apple on the other hand, very definitely has a leader. A man of vision and charisma. While he's running the ship, we can look forward to some insanely great tech.
Yours sincerely,
John Davis
hollyster
· 2 years ago
Hmmm this is interesting, it's almost like Micorosoft is saying that closed is the new "open". Steve Jobs has always been secretive which has been anti to the technology movement that is occurring...hmmm it would seem that the the walls around microsoft will be higher as a result of going into secrecy and thus negate a lot of open blogging that's going on.
David
· 2 years ago
Transparency + EXCECUTION > Secrecy
This post is nonsense if the iPhone flops.
James
· 2 years ago
I worked at Microsoft for 7 years, although not ever in Redmond, so I guess you could say I'm still a bit of an outsider. Also, for about half of it I was part of a MS rarity, a semi-indpendent subsidiary.
Anyway, I can't dispel alot of mystery surrounding what happens in MS, but I can say they don't really have alot of exciting products in the works that die, but they also aren't a group of complete borg drones. They have alot of smart, hard-working, innovative folks. The problem is like some other posters said, their system is broken. Their decision making process and management cycles are corrupted.
It's hard to explain in detail why I think MS is screwed up in a response to a blog, but I'll try to give a summary. From seeing several new products go through life cycles at MS, I would say the biggest problem with MS is the motivation for developing and bringing products to market. MS is not just a monopolist by practice, but also by intent. They try to work on products they think will create a new monopoly or perpetuate an existing one. They put 90% of their effort into Office and Windows to perpetuate their near monopoly in those products, but they generally only develop products they think they can make into monopolies of some sort or another.
Xbox came about because there were only a couple significant competitors in the market place. I think they thought that when MSN was created (yet more evidence they didn't understand the internet). They're pursuing cable box sowftware because those are already regional monopolies. They killed products like UltimateTV because they they were 2nd to market and their monopoly options seemed to go down the drain.
The strongest most innovative parts of MS are probably in the back-end business arena. They have actually competed and done well, but there you don't need style or big advances. Businesses are slow to adopt new technologies, so if you can get your foot in the door you develop little mini-monopolies within that company. That's why MS is so friendly and helpful with IT.
Anyway, I hope you get my point. Until MS decides to compete in areas where they think they can win because they make a better product, they will continue down their current scum-laden path.
- James
Jasbinder
· 2 years ago
Is the one of the first cases of an employee getting laid off for appearing in a blog video? Having used Apple/Google as examples of closed corporate cultures, the whole closed is the new open is a bit unnerving as companies could look and think that's it's actually okay to stay tight-lipped.
Stephane Rodriguez
· 2 years ago
To those saying Vista was vaporware all the way, etc., they got it exactly wrong. Here is a refresher.
With a monopoly such as Microsoft, it does not matter what Vista is. They know consumers and people in enterprises will eventually use it because they do not have a choice. Microsoft strong arms OEM with new OS licensing, while expiring the existing one. Zero choice here.
What commenters above don't realize apparently is that one of the pillars was not WPF and all those APIs (frankly a rehash of what already exists), the pillar was to make the first hardware and software DRM-enabled operating system. And, whether some accept it or not, Microsoft has achieved this goal and has pleased both their investors and their big customers, i.e. music labels and Hollywood.
Whether you like it or not, whether you think Microsoft was transparent enough or not, that does not change the fact that Microsoft is getting their way regardless...of what you think.
Chris
· 2 years ago
There is a consensus here that states that this person most likely was on the edge and the Scoble show pushed him over the edge with the company or gave them a highly anticipated reason that they may have otherwise found.
Whether or not this is true, I do not know. I do know that this is what a lot of people are suspecting.
James
· 2 years ago
A consensus about speculation is a consensus of nothing. Until we get some evidence to indicate a real reason, what people suspect is complete b*llsh*t.
Some Guy
· 2 years ago
Clamming up won't work for the Evil Empire the way it does for Apple. The reason is that whenever there's a buzz about a secret project at microsoft, it turns out to be a debacle like the zune or that "origami" abortion. When we get a surprise from Apple, it's either a runaway hit like the iPhone, or at least a major technical achievement like the G4 cube.
The fact is, nobody can be bothered to anticipate mediocrity.
Chris
· 1 year ago
It is treu btw,thx apple:) Ex proggamer windows,they pay nothing,and i'am not a ninja ok.
All Comments
When the guy has a new job, I wonder if you could let us know the name of the company that fired him. Then we can all assess the quality of judgement of the PR people there. The question they should have asked themselves is - did the guy do a good job on the ScobleShow? Simply mindlessly following "process" isn't the way to win.
As for Microsoft thinking being "secret" is the key to Apple's PR success, they should think a bit harder. As in the previous paragraph, this just sounds like more mindless obsession with "process" to me.
The point is... Making exiting new products and having people right at the top of the organization that know how to sell are the keys to Microsoft getting lots of great PR. That's it.
I thought the interview was interesting. It wasn't the most interesting thing I've ever done, but it was interesting to have the chat I did. I didn't hear anything that hurt the company in my eyes. I think it was a "rules are rules" kind of decision, not one made based on harm or goodness.
In the case of a large firm - this would be a PR and Financial nightmare - consuming extra resources to undo misinformation or information by disgruntled employees.
PR departments are hired for a reason. Perhaps, they could have given him another chance - but in this era of many qualified people competing for relatively few jobs, they might err on the side of caution depending on how irreplaceable an employee is.
Simply keeping the next version of Windows secret isn't going to make it good - if you want to copy Steve the real trick is to make Vista+1 good and release details in a controlled trickle (if you compare to how Apple handled Leopard).
The tricky balancing act for Steven Sinofsky is that while Apple are fairly good at keeping tight lipped about Mac OS X (and other products) and building great buzz and PR, his other main competitors in the OS market, Linux & (Open)Solaris are at the other end of the spectrum, and completely open and transparent about where they're going. And they get great buzz and PR too, although not necessary the same breathless stuff the iPhone is getting, but that is hardly a fair comparison - for example it seems unchallenged in the media that ZFS is the best filesystem in the world and Apple should / will adopt it sometime in Leopard.
They studied the iPod for 5 years and they came up with Zune? That's some learning.
Go back and watch Ballmer's video where he mouths off on how expensive the iPhone is, etc. That's learning?
When MSFT shuts off the spigot of FUD to IT that's so used to it by now, they are going to have a harder time competing. You see, the MSFT biz model is built on commoditization of pretty much everything but its own software. Vertical integration a la Apple and secrecy won't work in that model. How many PlaysForSure bait and switch can MSFT pull on its own partners?
BTW - You can put me in your show. I'll fire our PR guys if they complain :-)
Well, sure that has to be some control... but, the truth is that regular employees only rarely cause PR/financial damage to companies. Damage like that is almost caused by senior executives. Actually, Steve Jobs even joked about this in his recent D interview... "Apple is a ship that leaks from the top!"
As for it being a "learning company". Do I think they should just be a learn-and-do company? No. At points you take chances, which is what the Zune was.
Funny that you are still not admitting that you have been used and abused.
Having someone lone and lonely speak in the name of Microsoft brought a human touch. Everything you did was in Microsoft interest.
Last but not least, they look transparent, they aren't. An example of that is what's going on with Microsoft Office XML formats right now. The blogs are a covert fire and motion, while all the decisions are happening behind the scenes with Microsoft flying his evangelists left and right, sometimes hiring people all the way.
Mesmerized
www.watblog.com
If Microsoft keep quite on the next version of Windows then it will slow the take up rate which won't be good for business. Would you move your 20,000 corporate users onto an OS that's a secret. I think not.
Lying about something when evidence to the contrary is in front of you is counter-productive at best, even if you don't get caught out straight away.
Lack of skill at explaining/demoing? Not necessarily so. Explaining to a layperson maybe, but if a dev can't explain what the product does, then what the hell are they doing working on it?!
Boring? Unprofessional? It depends on the person I guess. I think it's unfair to make that sweeping a generalisation about all developers. Maybe PR thinks that, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.
Of course PR probably doesn't want to know what developers think of them though... ;-)
... although I would say Apple also gets a lot of PR because they are innovators in a somewhat stale technology landscape. Microsoft on the other doesn't innovate they copy, I mean "learn".
iPod... iPhone... what will be next?
That's why I'm happy he's in charge of the Windows Division at Microsoft,unfortunatly for People that Make their living or a least draw attention to themsleves by covering Microsoft, this will put a damper on their activities, People such as Mary Jo Foley will just have to work harder at the negative spin.
The "press" landscape is changing. It's not so clean cut as implied by the Cult Of The Amateur. Maybe we should get people to wear trilby hats with a "press" card tucked in the band ;-).
Microsoft is like McDonald's. We know what to expect, where to find it, and we're not hanging on their next bun-and-beef mashup. That's not necessarily bad. But revealing the new, mysterious and hitherto under-wraps McTofu sandwich won't compel me to camp outside their stores, even if it incorporates some of the latest trends and sensibilities and sells a million in a moment.
I'd love to be on your show sometime! I only answer to myself since I'm the Prez/Founder and I can't fire myself although sometimes I wish that was an option. :-)
They're afraid you're going to destroy their image.
Or they could have been looking for a reason to fire him or her anyway and your show was their paydirt.
Nobody is perfect though, and I feel that the more people get to know you for better or worse, the better. Just look at Paris Hilton, Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell. All people who have sullied their respective company affiliations to no end with outrageous comments, but who have come out on top in the end.
I'm not sure the MS development community would buy the same NDA restrictions as Apple's ADC members either. They work in a different marketplace - for instance Apple third party developers will be delivering Leopard only apps the day it ships, whereas it's pretty hard to find Vista enhanced apps, let alone Vista only ones. With pretty good reason - it took years for most PCs to switch to XP, whereas Apple OS updates spread almost as fast as the Flash player. Partly, of course, because of the third-party software market. Equally partly because Apple don't release updates of frameworks like Direct-X or .NET outside of OS releases.
Still, only announcing what you know you're going to deliver would be a starting point! That's the mess Apple got themselves into before the reverse merger with NeXT, and probably a good reason why Jobs seized control in the way he did - their reputation was in tatters at that point.
Actually it's interesting that Apple have a reputation for secrecy given that the 'Just one more thing' announcements are far fewer than the pre-announcements - but that in itself is good PR work. The iPhone, for instance, was pretty much revealed in patents in 2006.
I find their stories very interesting.
Rock on!
The wording of the NDAs that developers have to sign is part of it, but ultimately it's a more tribal thing that keeps the mouths shut and the torrents offline.
As someone posted out upthread, if all that Microsoft has learned from Apple is to talk less, then they are learning the wrong lessons (clearly, the Zune and Vista are excellent examples of what not to do).
As for the fired interviewee, that sucks. Good luck to him/her.
Companies have a responsibility to be transparent about what they are going to do, but also taking care concerning transparency about ideas that might get people focused in the wrong direction. With the large partner system some companies have you want to ensure that partners arent mislead or randomized with all the diferent ideas being brainstormed.
I was focused more on not blogging every idea that comes along. There is also the component of ensuring you have approval before you start having conversations about a subject.
http://www.newzbin.com/search/query/p/?q=leopar...
http://thepiratebay.org/search/leopard/0/0/0
Wow....
Jobs better crack the whip a little harder.
I just had a flash back to Pirates of Silicon Valley where the fictional Steve Jobs harassed 2 employees calling them clock punching losers.
Thank God I am not an at-will employee. And, thank God we have unions where I work. I wish more folks did.
(There should be a website somewhere listing all of MS’s marketing promises year by year vs what they actually delivered, and when (if ever))
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me over and over and I’ve gotta be an idiot to keep listening to MS’s bullshit “roadmaps”.
Apple, until this last rev. they’ve kept it quiet, and OVER delivered each time. Even with the fanboy sites predicting outrageous things Apple has kept up.
With Leopard Apple stumbled–delayed, no apparent secret wow. But they acknowledged they spread themselves too thin and took the heat, did some damage control. MS just redefines the product and continues on blithely.
Seriously, anyone’s head roll at MS over WinFS? It was obvious they were over-promising and in the weeds, but MS kept claiming ‘til the day they re-aligned it, then later quietly dropped it. Someone’s career shoulda been holed for that, but not at MS.
As to being different markets, no, I think both MS & Apple serve developers as well as direct customers. The difference is Apple waits to deliver a product before selling it to developers, while MS sells it to developers with the promise they’ll deliver it.
Frankly I think MS succeeds entirely in spite of itsel and, aside from marketing & playing hardball, is likely the worst run business in the US. Looking at the money, the power, the brainpower, they’ve got, and what eventually gets shipped, it’s pitiable.
There’s a reason MS is so zealous about buying or crushing smaller competitors–because they’re hopelessly broken inside. Too many managers, too few negative feedback loops, byzantine decision making structures.
Apple isn’t a great counter-example, they flip from ADD to OCD and back again with their attention to developers, ongoing programs, even products. But on a budget a fraction of MS’s they continue to innovate and excel in ways MS can only envy.
Seems to me someone blew an unnecessary gasket. I understand the need to control public facing messaging to a degree, though.
One tactic expertly employed by Microsoft is FUD and vaporware. Vista was not the first product promising the moon and failed to deliver. Microsoft is pretty good at sabotaging their competitors by promising their next product will have the same features and then some. The customers who listen understandably want to postpone their purchase and stick with Microsoft solutions. Whether the promise becomes a vaporware, that's another story. The most important thing is to keep competitors from getting Microsoft's customers.
Many people has been burned by Microsoft's FUD and vaporware and they are developing an immunity. They are no longer effective. Just look at the reaction to Microsoft post-Vista. Can Microsoft change tactics and compete fairly? That is an interesting question, but I have to say no, unless they get rid of Ballmer and the other hacks. If they do, then they'll have a good chance reforming.
In the past Microsoft has been transparent when it was inappropriate. As I said in my post earlier #25, throwing out all the ideas you have isn't being transparent it is being randomizing. In a company of Microsoft's size with the large partner system we have, these ideas get discussed and partner's take this as the direction we are going.
There obviously needs to be a level of responsibility when starting conversations about ideas and concepts when they aren't formed enough to know if they are solid ideas, or just floating concepts.
The real difficulty is that they use PR in an attempt to stifle competition via FUD, then don't come through with what they promise. How many features were promised for Vista (in order to compete with software that offered such features) that were dropped? How much of their innovation was egregious copying?
The real problem is that MS' PR is simply untrustworthy. If developers operate on MS' promises, they lose. If developers come up with something great, MS claims they'll have something better, putting their competitor out of business and then releasing either garbage or nothing at all.
So what can MS do? 1) Cease FUD. 2) Not promise more than they can deliver. 3) Not hype crap. 4) Not seek to destroy competition through their monopoly, but overcome them through true innovation.
Both Vista and Apple's Leopard are evolutionary steps--not revolutions. MS promised much and delivered little. Apple promised little and seems like it will deliver more. That, IMO, is the real secret of Apple's success.
I don't think it's pure FUD. Microsoft employees work on a lot of projects that they think will become new products but ultimately amount to nothing. When they tried to copy open source and become more community based, when gotdotnet and C9 opened. They started leaking their internal projects and making all sorts of claims that they would not deliver on.
Apple never tried to copy open source because they were never threatened by Linux the way Microsoft was and is. So they kept the normal product cycle of secrecy until the product was near completion.
Just look at stuff like Singularity. It's too slow, and a failed idea. They marketed it like it was going to be the next Linux. In reality it amounted to a lot of wasted R&D.
Apple puts up or shuts up. MS used to be the same way before Linux and Richard Stallman scared the daylights out of them. Then they tried to copy Google. When was the last time you went to Circuit city and saw boxed Google products?
Failed plan, failed implementation. Failed company with no good direction. Goodbye. Soon.
I'll continue to enjoy the non-secret, no broken promises (because no on is dumb enough to promise anything) and I can't complain anyway because it's free world of Ubuntu/Linux.
I'm not trying to be mean, but let's try and step back and ask "what really happened?".
It's easy for employees to get sympathy from people about "being fired" when the whole story is not told.
This happen to one of my co-workers. He was one of the worst people we had. The company let him go and didn't go blabbing about why he was fired, so he was free to say anything he wanted (and he did).
Just as most companies have tight financial controls in place to keep from getting ripped off and to keep employees from temptation (or from being wrongfully suspected of financial shenanigans), most smart companies have policies in place about who talks to the media or outside groups, and what they say.
For publicly owned or regulated companies, it protects the employee from saying something that could inadvertantly cause problems with regulators, or with the stock price. Far better to have somebody vet the interview who knows about Sarbanes-Oxley and any other complex rules on public disclosure of info.
There's plenty of media training and public speaking training available to help middle managers or people lower down the food chain handle themselves when talking publicly about information that hasn't been officially disclosed. The training also helps them choose better ways to communicate complex concepts (simplify, use examples, don't over-explain).
Management usually doesn't want everyone running around sharing information without any warning, and without any limits.
PR policies are in place to protect the company, but they're also in place to protect the employee.
Perhaps akin to the recent Bloggersgate fiasco where bloggers' quotes appeared in a Microsoft ad - the use of a simple disclosure would suffice Corporate PR departments without killing the buzz of your workforce ("I should say that my comments in this interview do not necessarily represent the views of my company...")
Making your workforce scared to talk to anyone about your company jeopardizes the most important marketing tool that you have. Firing them for doing so certainly won't endear them, or anyone who they talk to afterwards, to your brand either.
And you can rest assured that a man fired for talking positively about his work will make it his work to talk negatively about his company thereafter. Talk about flipping the funnel the wrong way!
All the best
Tom
Perhaps akin to the recent Bloggersgate fiasco where bloggers' quotes appeared in a Microsoft ad - the use of a simple disclosure would suffice Corporate PR departments without killing the buzz of your workforce ("I should say that my comments in this interview do not necessarily represent the views of my company...")
Making your workforce scared to talk to anyone about your company jeopardizes the most important marketing tool that you have. Firing them for doing so certainly won't endear them, or anyone who they talk to afterwards, to your brand either.
And you can rest assured that a man fired for talking positively about his work will make it his work to talk negatively about his company thereafter. Talk about flipping the funnel the wrong way!
All the best
Tom
MS has used FUD to it's advantage in the early years. They'd promise products in very early stages of development to counter what their competitors were already shipping in hopes of keeping people from buying their competitor's products. The problem is, when you miss on a promise, you lose credibility. Regardless of we think of Vista as an actual product today, Microsoft has suffered a serious credibility issue with regard to the development of this product. When you consider what was delivered with out long it took to deliver it and how much money was spent on developing it, coupled with how many features were eventually withdrawn, it's an outright embarassment.
You're telling us in this post that transparency is a bad thing. Which is the reverse of what you've been advocating all these years.
You want to get developers to chat. Get them to talk about stuff they hack outside work at playhouse like our.
There is also the point that many of its products suck. I didn't notice anyone camping outside stores to get the first edition of Vista, but I do know more than ten people who installed it, then wiped their hard disks and went back to XP. This kind of thing tends to dampen one's enthusiasm somewhat.
I think the crux of the matter is that Microsoft lacks a leader. Gates has the charisma of a chartered accountant and Ballmer is so full of BS ("Zune has 25% market share,") that the only people who would follow him would do it out of curiosity. "Where the hell's he going?"
MS products are the products of committees. After everybody and his dog has put their spoke in, what you end up with is about as exciting as supermarket music. You can't be all things to all people and have any originality.
Apple on the other hand, very definitely has a leader. A man of vision and charisma. While he's running the ship, we can look forward to some insanely great tech.
Yours sincerely,
John Davis
This post is nonsense if the iPhone flops.
Anyway, I can't dispel alot of mystery surrounding what happens in MS, but I can say they don't really have alot of exciting products in the works that die, but they also aren't a group of complete borg drones. They have alot of smart, hard-working, innovative folks. The problem is like some other posters said, their system is broken. Their decision making process and management cycles are corrupted.
It's hard to explain in detail why I think MS is screwed up in a response to a blog, but I'll try to give a summary. From seeing several new products go through life cycles at MS, I would say the biggest problem with MS is the motivation for developing and bringing products to market. MS is not just a monopolist by practice, but also by intent. They try to work on products they think will create a new monopoly or perpetuate an existing one. They put 90% of their effort into Office and Windows to perpetuate their near monopoly in those products, but they generally only develop products they think they can make into monopolies of some sort or another.
Xbox came about because there were only a couple significant competitors in the market place. I think they thought that when MSN was created (yet more evidence they didn't understand the internet). They're pursuing cable box sowftware because those are already regional monopolies. They killed products like UltimateTV because they they were 2nd to market and their monopoly options seemed to go down the drain.
The strongest most innovative parts of MS are probably in the back-end business arena. They have actually competed and done well, but there you don't need style or big advances. Businesses are slow to adopt new technologies, so if you can get your foot in the door you develop little mini-monopolies within that company. That's why MS is so friendly and helpful with IT.
Anyway, I hope you get my point. Until MS decides to compete in areas where they think they can win because they make a better product, they will continue down their current scum-laden path.
- James
With a monopoly such as Microsoft, it does not matter what Vista is. They know consumers and people in enterprises will eventually use it because they do not have a choice. Microsoft strong arms OEM with new OS licensing, while expiring the existing one. Zero choice here.
What commenters above don't realize apparently is that one of the pillars was not WPF and all those APIs (frankly a rehash of what already exists), the pillar was to make the first hardware and software DRM-enabled operating system.
And, whether some accept it or not, Microsoft has achieved this goal and has pleased both their investors and their big customers, i.e. music labels and Hollywood.
Whether you like it or not, whether you think Microsoft was transparent enough or not, that does not change the fact that Microsoft is getting their way regardless...of what you think.
Whether or not this is true, I do not know. I do know that this is what a lot of people are suspecting.
The fact is, nobody can be bothered to anticipate mediocrity.