Blogging at Apple

Yes, that title is a bit like “ice cubes in hell,” but why Apple is so averse to blogs and other social media and whether they should change is an endlessly popular topic; a recent comment on it comes from Mack Collier at The Viral Garden. Mack writes:

But how did embracing blogging help Dell and Microsoft? In both cases, it helped change the conversation that we were having about each company. Dell went from being aloof to human when they stopped ignoring bloggers during Dell Hell, and started engaging us in our space. Microsoft went from being the ‘Evil Empire’, to being human once thousands of their employees started blogging, and Robert Scoble started Channel 9. Gates should still be sending Scoble a royalty check on the goodwill that he helped build for Mr. Softie.

In both cases, blogging helped Dell and Microsoft better connect with its customers and the conversation we were having about each company changed a bit. But does Apple really want or need its conversation to change?

Here’s the question I like to ask. If you had ten minutes trapped in an elevator with Steve Jobs, how would you pitch him on Apple social media strategies?

It’s hard to make the case that Apple needs to change right now. Financial results? Good. Customer loyalty? Excellent. Reputation for innovation? Solid. Adoption by new users? Accelerating. So… maybe blogging at Apple is a problem looking for a solution. And I don’t thing we’ll see a Steve Jobs blog ever (other than the fake one).

But could Apple benefit from other kinds of blogging and general opening of the gates through social media? How about a blog from the team working on the iPhone SDK to build community among those who want to develop iPhone apps? How about a blog from the people behind the iWork suite that lets us see what they’re thinking and how they want to build a rival to MS Office - and let them know whether it’s working at the user level? I think there are lots of opportunities for Apple farther down in the organization.

The question is - do they need it? Here’s an alternative thought: one of Apple’s strengths is the ability to respond to user needs instead of stated user desires. Consider the iPhone. It’s a rethinking of how smart phones work. It’s not, however, what you’d come up with if you took users of Windows Mobile devices, Palms, and Blackberries and asked them to explain what irritates them about those devices.

I’m a former Win Mobile user (now with an iPhone). I would have talked about placement of keys and menu structure and all kinds of things that are probably useful user feedback when you’re operating with the paradigm of making a better Win Mobile phone. You wouldn’t necessarily get an iPhone out of that feedback… and yet when I got my iPhone my reaction “Finally! Someone got it right.”

So maybe Apple should be playing to its strengths and just keep listening to other conversations out there - where you learn things like “web browsing on these things is just awful” or “the keyboard just doesn’t work right” - and then come back with products that nobody expected, but that fit the needs they perhaps couldn’t even articulate well.

I offer that as food for thought, not an answer. Should Apple blog? As someone immersed in social media I find myself saying “yes!” immediately. Why should they do it? What benefit would they get? Those are harder questions.

They’re good questions, though and point to the ongoing difficulty of measuring the ROI of social media. These are thing to think about when talking to any company about blogging.

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