On the official Palm blog
So it’s been a couple of months since the blog.palm.com launched, the official mouthpiece of Palm. I don’t think I’m being unfair in calling it an abject failure. One wonders what Palm was thinking when they launched it, it is like they had no idea what they wanted to do with it but felt they should have a blog because the kidz liked them blogs.
Palm has an incredibly loyal user base (I know because I am/was one of them), a user base that is by this time looking desperately for something to cling to in the Palm world. Something to validate the years of loyalty to the company in the face of absolutely no innovation for years. Their blog could have provided that, it could have been a place to generate some excitement for upcoming products (including the Foleo and possibly other Treo’s) and potentially to open a dialogue between the company and it’s audience.
What the blog actually is is a few posts making excuses, announcing the 700p patch, retracting it and then kind of announcing it again. A few more posts on a product announcement or two and then some navel gazing or short blurbs on third party apps. The most successful posts were the ones related to the things that people actually cared about (where I am looking at success by the number of comments made) - this tends towards the 700p patch.
It is hard to imagine but the post regarding the launch of the Foleo was a paragraph, 2 links and a small picture of the device, let’s compare that to the post on the national bike to work week post they did which was 4 paragraphs, a ton of links and 2 pictures with captions. Are they completely insane? The Palm blog should have been devoted to generating hype for the Foleo, explaining why it was revolutionary. They should be interviewing Hawkins and the developers (this guy who’s developing the Foleo, does way more for the Foleo on his personal blog than the official palm blog does).
It is so obvious. If Palm genuinely believed in its products it would be easy to do. If management was genuinely excited for its current and upcoming products, maintaining this website with great posts would be easy. You would think that product managers would be chomping at the bit to have a public forum where they could defend the quickly tarnishing image of their company. The example of the cold reception of the Foleo (upon which the company has bet their future) is just one. They could be posting posts like the one at Palminfocenter with a comparison of the Treo and iPhone that showcases the strength of the Treos and the weaknesses of iPhone.
They could be talking about what it means to have the investment by Elevation Partners. How having those new folks on the board is providing them with some direction or some whatever. Or talking with anyone in the company at all that had even a shred of excitement or confidence at all in anything having to do with the company.
Just look at the playstation blog. That is by no means a successful product - it turned what was an insurmountable lead (from the PS2) to a distant 2nd place to the Wii. But they push on ahead, they’ve got all kinds of posts, talking with developers, explaining delays and things of that nature. It just isn’t hard if there’s anything at all interesting happening around your product. And if you are honest and forthright with your user base about problems you generate good will, not the animosity that Palm has garnered with its continual bungling of the 700p patch.
What the blog is telling me is that no one in the company believes in it anymore. That the product pipeline is filled with things that no one finds the least bit compelling and can’t find anything good to say about. That the company doesn’t even believe in the launch of the Foleo. It’s just a crying shame to see the once great company laid so low.
July 6th, 2007 at 11:54 am
I’d take it a different way — the reason I’ve not posted to the blog lately is that I’ve been incredibly busy working on getting the Foleo shipped and haven’t had time to write a good piece for it. I’ve got something in my drafts folder now that I’m almost ready to submit. We’re also in between products — the Foleo is announced, but we’ve not yet shipped it, so some details are still private, so the team has to be careful about what they say.
July 6th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Ben, thanks for stopping by. :) I’m glad you’ll be posting, the post I found on your site was the first Foleo piece I’d seen that was a genuinely interesting piece on the subject. I think Palm doesn’t need to get all technical on any Foleo post, what it needs to do (IMO, of course) is basically get the word out on differentiating the Foleo. To my knowledge (and anyone I’ve discussed the Foleo with) it seems like a stripped down laptop, maybe interesting maybe not, but certainly not revolutionary. They need to start getting the word out.
I don’t think the developers necessarily should take the time to come up with and write posts, you guys are busy! But they should be resources for the product managers to make some really great posts. They should have an idea, come to you for a specific interview or whatever and then write up the post.
The product managers really need to stop worrying about biking day and nascar pictures and address the worries of the users as well as generate some excitement around the product. They’re product managers, they should know how to talk about their products! Talk about the 680, *tell* me why it’s the bomb - don’t ask my why it’s the bomb. It’s finally an exciting time in the smartphone market and the Treo, which used to be the *only* exciting thing about the market is already an also ran.
I’m glad someone there cares and maybe everyone at Palm is passionate about it, I don’t know. I’m just writing about the impression I get from that blog. To me Palm is worse off for having it. The only real information it’s given has been the 700p patches and those could just as effectively been sent out as press releases.
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