Hewlett-Packard is starting corporate blogs
After trying some blogs on a small scale in November 2004, Hewlett-Packard (HP) is becoming serious. Several executives have now started their own blogs and one of them has even started a podcast. And right from the beginning, HP made a mistake. It deleted a negative comment. But HP heard the voice of the blogosphere and reinstated the comment after saying it was a good learning experience.
First, let’s go back several months ago. In August 2004, when Jonathan Schwartz, chairman of Sun Microsystems, wrote in a blog entry that HP-UX was a “dying” operating system, HP replied with a letter of its legal department asking Sun to remove the blog entry. Of course, Sun rejected the request. But in terms of strategies of communication, it was something like a fight between tools from the 19th and the 21st centuries.
Later, in November 2004, HP discreetly started some blogs: read for example “HP quietly begins Web log experiment.”
And last week, Steve Rubel and others announced the big news: “HP Execs Launch Blogs and Podcasts.” You can read for instance the blog of David Gee, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Software, Technology Solutions Group.
Apparently, HP wasn’t quite ready to face negative views and deleted the comment of one unhappy user. In “HP Gets a Clue,” Dan Gillmor writes that the outcome was positive: after deleting a negative blog comment from a reader, the company reinstated it.
And in this note, “Taking it on the chin,” David Gee recognized that HP — or himself — made a mistake.
We’re learning more and more about our customers every single day. Since I started to blog back in March, I’ve received comments posted online and eMail directly to me. Some are positive and some are negative. Earlier this week, an HP customer posted a comment about his experience upgrading a media center PC. His experience was not good and he let us know. We pulled the comment. This was a bad decision and we have reversed it.
HP, welcome to the blogging world!
