One of the things I enjoy most about Nicholas Carr's blog is his honesty. No punches pulled there.
And this morning he slammed a post by Edleman blogger, Steve Rubell on comments by Yahoo bloggers on stuff that buggs them about their products... Steve says:
I like companies and products that have the guts to say "we suck" or something close to it. It's very un PR. It says to me, "hey, we want a best of breed product and we're going to work our butts off to give it to you."
Nick says:
Do companies actually pay for this kind of knuckleheaded advice? The last we thing we need is companies getting in touch publicly with their inner suckiness. Just give me something I want to buy and shut the hell up. I have enough friends.
Frankly, I don't have the time to hang about reading companies navel gazing on their own products. As Steve says at the end of his post, actions speak louder than words. And, as a Yahoo shareholder I'd rather see focus on execution than dissent. Just cause Microsoft is doing it doesn't mean it is right for others.
The problem with this kind of internal activism is it mostly points to problems and not solutions. In fact, they probably can't even speak to the solutions. All this has done is encouraged me to stick with iLife for all my personal stuff and not continue to play with Yahoo 360. Is that what Yahoo wanted - Less participants?
At the end of the say I'm OK with a company talking about its shortcomings so long as it is talking about what it is doing about them and not whineing. Make your 'bitch lists' action lists and we would all be thrilled. The tone and nature of this kind of dialogue is rich and important to internal teams - IMHO, it adds little externally.
I'm glad Steve feels better for it. I feel worse, worse for Yahoo - a company with products I really like.
