One thing Microsoft will have to learn on its own (I used to play one of the cops internally against people who tried to do stupid things like pulling down posts that pissed off someone) is never pull down posts. Especially if you don’t want someone like Mike Arrington to notice. That’s called breaking into jail, for those of you keeping PR scorecards at home.
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Robert Scoble works at Fast Company.TV (title: Managing Director). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.
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August 17th, 2006 at 1:39 am
agree…this probably wasn’t a story if they post was left up.
August 17th, 2006 at 1:51 am
[...] The most interesting aspect of this story is that someone yelled and got the post pulled down. Microsoft should know there is no better way to get someone’s attention in the blogosphere than pulling down a post. Robert Scoble calls this “breaking into jail” and I agree. If you are going to give your developers blogs, let them post. Nothing Stuart wrote was particularly confidential - we all know this is coming. [...]
August 17th, 2006 at 2:53 am
Maybe thats why it was pulled ;)
August 17th, 2006 at 3:37 am
[...] Rule #1: Don’t pull down posts: “One thing Microsoft will have to learn on its own (I used to play one of the cops internally against people who tried to do stupid things like pulling down posts that pissed off someone) is never pull down posts. Especially if you don’t want someone like Mike Arrington to notice. That’s called breaking into jail, for those of you keeping PR scorecards at home.” [...]
August 17th, 2006 at 5:48 am
Don’t count on me being surprised when Microsoft learns from this…and starts strategically pulling posts for maximum distribution.
August 17th, 2006 at 7:19 am
Well Doug called it I think.
Attention is what gains market share, whatever the means.
Pulling posts is censorship, and like GTA3etc, doing it once it is clearly too late does no real harm and generates a stack of interest - benign or no.
Don’t bother believing that you have thought of something no-one else has in these connected times - they have already found it along with a way to exploit it.
August 17th, 2006 at 7:50 am
Like Doug and Paul said, it certainly makes for a lot of attention getting. On the other hand, perhaps MS is stuck on stupid?
August 17th, 2006 at 8:02 am
[...] Robert Scoble Called this breaking into jail, One thing Microsoft will have to learn on its own (I used to play one of the cops internally against people who tried to do stupid things like pulling down posts that pissed off someone) is never pull down posts. Especially if you don’t want someone like Mike Arrington to notice. That’s called breaking into jail, for those of you keeping PR scorecards at home. [...]
August 17th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Yeah, I doubt that Microsoft could do this on purpose. Let’s say they do use that as a manipulation technique, though. Word would get out and then the story will become that instead of their products.
If they want bloggers to talk about their manipulation techniques rather than focus on their products and what they are trying to do, then they should try that.
Most of the geeks at Microsoft, though, genuinely want you to try their work. So I doubt they’d try this.
August 17th, 2006 at 10:23 am
[...] この話で一番面白いのは誰かがやいやい言い出して記事が削除されたという点だ。Microsoftはブロゴスフィア(blogosphere)で注意を引くのにいちばんてっとり早い方法は記事を削除することだというのを知るべきだ。Robert Scobleはこれを「刑務所に押し入るようなもの」と表現しているが同感だ。従業員にブログを持たせるなら、記事も投稿させておくべきだ。それにStuartが書いたことは別に秘密ではない。誰でもこのプロジェクトが進行中なのは知っていることだ。 [...]
August 17th, 2006 at 11:40 am
Does Michael actually know that “someone yelled”, or is that speculation? Doesn’t seem to be anything worth yelling about. Maybe he hit Publish when he meant to hit Save as Draft?
August 17th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Joe: I don’t know, but it fits the pattern. I’ve seen several things get pulled after internal heat got too hot in the oven. Bloggers need to realize that once it’s up the damage is done. Just leave it up. Pulling it down will just make us point fingers and make up conspiracy theories. That’s called breaking into PR jail because it takes attention away from your product.
August 17th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Joe Cheng makes a good point. No one except the original poster knows why he took it down. I’ve personally made the mistake of publishing instead of saving for future publication.
As the old saying goes “Never say never.” If pulling a post un-pisses off somebody that is pissed off then that may be the wisest course of action. And let’s face it, tomorrow there will be a different meme and this will be long forgotten.
August 17th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
David: the problem is that when you work for Microsoft everyone is watching you like a hawk and RSS aggregators usually cache stuff anyway. I have pulled a few posts and I always leave a note explaining why I pulled it. That way it might attract attention but everyone will have an explanation to link to.
August 17th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Scoble what damage was done from MS’ perspective? I rather doubt anyone thinks less of the product. It appears more people are talking about it now than when Arrington first speculated about it a while back. So, they succeeded in spite of themselves. Don’t think they won’t now see this a a good strategy. Get bloggers poop-pooing you ab out pulling a post few would likely have read in the first place? Accidental brilliance if you ask me.
This reminds me of the Office 97 file incompatibility issues MS had. While it was a dumb decision, it ultimatey got people to likely upgrade faster than they would have otherwise. Makes you wonder if that was the ultimate intent of the incompatibility.
August 17th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
You mean like Matt Nunn did when he removed his post about his wife and kids’ experience when they last flew on Frontier Airlines? I was going to link to it, but I refreshed my browser tab, and it was gone!
August 18th, 2006 at 6:53 am
[...] Don’t Pull Posts By Jim Duncan Robert Scoble today gives us a refresher course in blogging. [...]
August 18th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Scoble, what do you mean, “Microsoft will have to learn” not to pull down posts? It’s individual employees that have to learn this. And Microsoft does have the largest number of employee bloggers (by far), so naturally there’ll be times when one of those large number of employees will post something he regrets and then compounds the mistake by pulling it. That doesn’t mean that this is company policy, like your “Microsoft will have to learn” statement suggests.
August 18th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Brewster: Microsoft and its employees are one and the same thing. Thanks for noticing!
November 14th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
V
June 29th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
I think Scoble will have to learn that people will do this sort of thing: pulling posts after posting them. It really, actually, isn’t too hard to understand.