Confessions of an ex-EMC Blogger
It is an interesting time we live in. In a world where high-tech meets social networking things can run on the hairy edge of information leakage or brand management, especially in a public company. However, during 2008 and 2009, when big companies were trying to figure out what to do within the ‘social media’ fray, I was working at EMC and EMC did a fantastic job of embracing social media and using it to their advantage to drive a number of very positive initiatives. So much so that I believe in August of last year they won an award (or were at least publicly recognized) for their use of social media. I have to commend Polly Pearson for this. Driving a brand with no less than 20 bloggers (probably more), among them the likes of Chuck Hollis, Barry Burke and StorageZilla, all of whom tweet as well, one would think would take quite a bit of corralling. Interestingly though, it didn’t. The main reason, trust.
Each person at the company who blogged took that ‘role’ very seriously. Each person I knew who blogged wanted to not only be the top EMC blogger, but the top blogger in their respective area of expertise. EMC bloggers are very smart people and have a desire to be the best at what they do. EMC bloggers have driven some of the most authentic and original blogs with great thought leadership in the storage industry. It is because of the desire to deliver great quality content that they lived by a set of rules that anyone who worked for a public company would adhere to.
1) Don’t divulge any company secrets – which is a part of your employee agreement anyway
2) Don’t say things that are untrue or could get you in trouble in the future
3) Deliver great content
And if there was ever a question, there were always folks internally who you could bounce your thoughts and ideas off of before posting. It was for these reasons, as well as trust that propelled EMC to the top of the high tech social media ladder.
EMC also took social media thing to whole other level. EMC uses twitter to chat with users who have questions and inform their following of product announcements to keep them informed. EMC also has multiple facebook pages ( some for different products), a YouTube channel, LinkedIn Groups, friendfeed and even a flicker page. It seems like EMC understood that these outlets provided avenues to get information to their customers in the way they like to receive it (which is what social media is all about) and that because EMC is a vehicle to drive a lot of thought leadership content, customers look to them as a trusted advisor which in turn drove their brand.
In 2009, at EMC World, EMC had a bloggers lounge, sponsored by ZDnet, where anyone employees, press, analysts, and even users could go and blog about the event, it was brilliant and generated a ton of activity.
Then, after the acquisition of Data Domain, a chunk of the blogging wall started to crumble. As the management from Data Domain took over in the new BRS (Backup / Recovery Systems) Division, bloggers (in the BRS division) who had driven a great deal of thought leadership, for both the company and for their users, were asked to not blog and that there would be a ‘new’ blogging policy. However, if you felt you needed to blog, you could do as they did at Data Domain and just regurgitate a press release to keep your readership informed. Additionally the BRS group was trying to drive a new blogging policy across the company as noted by the number of times EMC bloggers ‘Disclaimers’ have changed over the past few months.
I guess this is what happens as big companies get bigger, the need for more control and I find that more control tends to drive less creativity and innovation. High tech companies even do this in R&D. Take a look at EMC’s R&D budget and divide where the money goes between innovation and acquisition. More of it is spent on acquisition these days.
The icing on EMC’s social media cake however came the other day when I got this message in my LinkedIn Inbox after I had posted my latest blog link in their EMC World Group in the discussion area. The purpose was to offer an alternative to storage tiering by using data compression.
And then my discussion was gone.
It seems now that EMC has stooped to censorship in their need to control what information their customers see. I find it ironic as I did not mention the name of my new company in the blog post. As I said, I simply offered another alternative (a thought leadership alternative) to solving a complex storage problem. An alternative that EMC claims they have as well (though not quite as robust in its implementation).
It got me to thinking. In 2008 EMC claims that 8000 people came to EMC World, if 1500 of these people were employees, then there were about 6500 users. In 2009 they had half as many attendees at 4000 with about 750 employees – so say there were 3250 users. The EMC World Group in linked in has a total of 308 people. Approximately 50% of these people are employees, analysts, press, students and partners, the other 150 are users. I would hardly call what I did as “spamming” the EMC World Group.
I know the Group is an EMC group and they can probably do whatever they want to control the content but where does Linked In draw the line between an invited member to a group being allowed to share their ideas, which is what the group is all about, and censoring the content to only be what the group administrator (who isn’t even a storage technologist) wants it to be?
This is one of the main reasons why I love Wikibon and think they have a fresh idea on thought leadership. Smart people can put content in the wiki and then if other users have an alternative to the solution, they can comment or add to the post. This is what helps users to be more successful in their roles, not censorship.
I really hope that this is not a trend that we going to see continue with EMC. I like to hold EMC up as an example of how powerful social media and blogging can be! I don’t want to think of people like Chuck, Barry, Zilla being censored; you may not always agree with what they say but they are powerful contributors to the storage blogosphere. Powerful as in thought-provoking!
I’m sure even their rivals would miss them!
Steve: I think you were on to something there with the really, really dumb social media strategy that Data Domain has… but as far as the LinkedIn group goes… well… it’s their sandbox, their rules.
Now… on the other hand I’m sure Storage Monkeys would entertain your blog posts, or (better yet) you could even set up a StorWize group there.
Interesting post Steve. Do you think this indicates a corporate problem or just the actions of an over-zealous or paranoid moderator?
Marc, I think that it probably was an over-zealous moderator but this is where having a moderator who understood the technology could make better decisions on what should be kept or not. If someone comes into a group saying things that aren’t true or really ‘bashing’ EMC, well then that isn’t thought leadership. However, a post offering a different lens in which to view a storage problem is a whole different matter. The fact that I work for a storage technology company seemed to be the only criteria for removing the post.
As Martin mentioned, I certainly hope that don’t put too may ‘restrictions’ in place because I agree that going back and forth with Chuck and Zilla is great and it raises the intellectual storage prowess.
Thanks for the comment.
Greg,
I think you are right, time to start dropping thought leadership into other watering holes.
Thanks for the comment.
Hi Steve — hope the new gig is going well.
First, your comments on the DataDomain policy sting a bit. When we set up the whole social media proficiency program, we eschewed “corporate standards”.
We went with a lightweight governance framework and policy. We gave people the option of having their own blogs without enforcing any sort of heavy corporate standards.
This also means that we gave people — and business units — the freedom to engage with 2.0 on any level they felt comfortable with. And, as you survey the vast EMC empire, you’ll find a wide range of engagement models, including a few that prefer not to engage.
EMC is not a homogeneous place — we like it that way.
Everyone who manages some sort of community space tries to keep things on-topic and spam-free. My blog, for example, gets all sorts of weird stuff put on it.
I try to keep it neat, orderly and on topic. Some may scream “censorship!!!” but I think the vast majority of readers appreciate a light editorial hand.
The same philosophy extends to all the other EMC bloggers and community managers. Run it as you see fit for the audience. There are no guidelines, there are no mandates, etc. — just try to use good judgment and be respectful.
Someone sent along your post in the Linkedin group to me. Frankly, on first blush, it looked like vendor spam — at least to me. Then I recognized your name, and the name of the company, and I sort of got the context.
That doesn’t mean I’m defending the actions of the individual, but — hey — there are two sides to any discussion.
You run this blog on behalf of your company. I bet you try to edit out the inappropriate stuff as you see fit. And if you’re not getting the inappropriate stuff, just wait!
Anyway, hope things are going well …
Best regards
– Chuck
Hi Steve,
Wow. I’m really sorry that you were so frustrated by my message to you about your post on the EMC World Group on LinkedIn. It seems that some of my message didn’t make it through for some reason based on what you posted above, so for that I apologize, as I think it added to your frustration.
As you know from being an EMCer, we definitely are not censorship heavy in any aspect of social media. Not in the least. I can say this for a fact since I help set and drive the strategy. In fact, we encourage our employees to be open and transparent in their social media and social networking use, including emailing when something is not relevant to help the person who posted it to understand why we feel it’s not relevant and offer alternatives that would be more in alignment with the strategy of the particular forum, group, page, etc., which was a part of the message to you, but also shared below. We also share with our EMC crew regularly that content in context is far more valuable to readers.
This EMC World Group is intended for the discussion of topics specifically related to the EMC World Event, and not as a general forum for discussion of storage strategies. Might I suggest you bring your more general storage discussion over to the Storage Experts (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=940627) or Storage Professionals (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=93470) groups in LinkedIn?
As I said before, I’d welcome you to post on a topic relevant to EMC World (www.emcworld.com) to spark a healthy discussion in the group. I would have thought with all your time here that you’d know me well enough to know that I’m not an over-zealous moderator
I do, however, believing in doing what is right for the company, and sometimes that means making unpopular suggestions on where a discussion might best resonate with the audience.
Looking forward to continued conversation with you, and please do say Hi if you’re at EMC World this year!
All the best,
Jamie Pappas | jamiepappas.com
Manager, Social Media Strategy | EMC Corp
Hey Chuck – First, thank you very much for taking the time to respond. I know we are all busy but this is important to me and, I believe, the entire blogging storage community.
I am a bit shocked at the whole “spam” notion though. Even when writing for EMC, my thoughts were just as I outlined in my piece. To have thought leadership and discuss the merits of technology. Just because the blog ended up in the EMC group from another vendor, should it be considered spam? This is what I was really talking about, the piece wasn’t judged on its technical merit – weather or not tireing is useful, I believe it is, but it is to hard for the users to get to today, so the suggestion of providing them with an alternative to tiering was my only suggestion, without mentioning company or product.
I would ask, if a trusted partner, who is a member of that group also sold NTAP products but commented on a technology feature of storage that may not exactly fit into the EMC portfolio today would it be removed? Or would EMC believe that their partners are also trying to increase their ‘trusted advisor’ status in the storage community, which brings them more users and more users means more people to sell EMC stuff to? This is where I believe that good, healthy conversation about different storage management philosophies allows all boats to rise with the tide. That was my only point.
And, oh, I do get plenty of inappropriate stuff on my site and I do ‘filter it’ but wouldn’t remove something that just offered another point of view.
Again Chuck, thanks for taking the time, I truly appreciate it.
Well, I guess everyone’s different.
Way back when I started my blog, I’d go to other sites, try to get involved in the discussion, and link back to my stuff.
Sometimes the comment made it in, sometimes it didn’t.
I never took it personally either way. Not everyone wanted to hear what I had to say. Such is life.
I hope you don’t take it personally when it happens to you.
Best regards!
– Chuck
Jamie,
Thank you very much for your note, and if it is the goal of the group to discuss EMC World ‘only’ topics, and also by the nature that you own the group, I will, in the future ensure that all info in that group pertains to EMC World only content. I am curious what part of the message didn’t make it thought though? The intro, context and close are all in the image I sent so I am a bit perplexed. Anyway, moving on.
One thing I would note, and though no fault of anyone here, it is hard to tell what some of these groups are for. If I look at the EMC World Group overview – this is what you get:
“EMC World is the ultimate educational forum for all EMC customers and partners.
Learn how to put private cloud computing in action from EMC engineers, customers, and partners. Participate in 500+ breakout sessions, technology updates, keynotes, lectures, live demonstrations, hands-on workshops, and birds-of-a-feather sessions.
Challenge your expertise with tutorials, business tracks, technical training, and developer sessions ranging from novice to expert.
Explore integrated solutions with exhibitors in the Solutions Pavilion.
Connect with your peers at fun and informative networking events.”
There is a lot of talk about storage solutions and how to have an impact in your storage environment so I naturally assumed it was all things storage. If a topic comes up at EMC World that users of this group want to discuss are they asked to move the conversation to a ‘solutions’ group? It just seems like this would be tough to manage, no?
Either way, I will, in the future, be sure to keep the information in this group strictly related to EMC World but it would be good if there were a way to note that this is really an event only group…
Thanks again Jamie.
Hey Chuck,
It wasn’t take personally at all. It was more of a shock having come from there to see it happen.
Steve
Hi Steve,
Sorry – I was not clear. The message I intended to send and have recorded down in my word document to keep track of who I’ve contacted include the reasons cited above for why the post was deleted. I did not, however, include the information on the other groups. All I can gather is that there was a fat-finger mistake on my end. That’s why the apology – I’m sorry you didn’t get the intended message because I think it likely added to your confusion and frustration. You got only the first paragraph. And that’s on me for not checking before I sent.
I was, admittedly, completely shocked to have not heard back from you asking for further clarification when I saw the message that you received on this post. After all, that is one of the things we also encourage at EMC – working through challenges, disagreements, and comments with the individual in question by contacting them directly.
There is a fine line for all of us to walk – contributors and community managers alike – in that we want to share our content, thoughts, and opinions, but often want to do so without the community manager questioning the content and its relevancy to their target audience. So, we as content providers feel we should be able to share, and we, as community managers feel we should be able to determine what content meets our goals and objectives and what does not.
Me – I don’t moderate comments on my blog, and have never deleted one either and I think the good and bad are worth showing and discussing. I was surprised to see that you do, especially given the topic at hand. But, it’s a personal choice for us all as to what we determine is of value to our audience and what is not, whether it’s on our blog or within our community or group.
For me, to share a bit more context, the post was confusing because it didn’t reflect the tile of your blog, and there wasn’t any content soliciting a conversation or discussion. It was simply a title post with a bit.ly link to what ended up being yoru blog post. When I clicked through and read your post, I still couldn’t see how it tied to an EMC World Conference group or what value you were trying to bring to the EMC World audience – and thus it was dubbed, after discussion with the team, as spam. I’m sorry that it came across so harshly to you.
As you’ve suggested, I’ve updated the group description to reflect that it’s the place for all things EMC World related. Hopefully that will help, although honestly this is the first time we’ve had anything like this come up in the group.
The good news in all of this is that we still have the ability to dialogue, discuss, and share sentiments, which is what social media is all about. At the end of the day, we can agree or disagree on whether or not what I did was the right thing. I stick by my decision and hope that my apology and comments here serve to help you understand where I was coming from and that it was not at all personal, just as I assume your post naming me was not a personal one.
All the best,
Jamie Pappas | jamiepappas.com
Manager, Social Media Strategy | EMC Corp
I have mixed feelings on this topic and strong feelings on some of the comments here. I’ll put all my thoughts here, FWTW.
1. I didn’t see your original post, but it sounds like the way it was worded did come across as vendor-biased stuff (that’s what Chuck seemed to think). But as long as it was discussing technology and not a product, I don’t know why they felt compelled to react that way.
2. I censor posts in the BackupCentral.com forums, but ONLY those that are vulgar/offensive, or those that are obviously a vendor answering a question with “buy my stuff.” The main reason I do that is that my forums are also forwarded to mailing lists that I don’t control or manage, and those lists don’t appreciate those types of posts. As to blog comments, I only censor those that are vulgar or obvious spam (like the one I got the other day to buy hand cream).
3. Chuck seems to be saying that he has no idea what you’re talking about WRT to EMC cracking down on bloggers. You were there and you know the changes that were afoot, and I also have spoken to some insiders and know that the view on blogs (at least those having to do with backup and recovery) has DEFINITELY changed in the company, and I know of at least one EMC blogger that has involuntarily stopped blogging, so either Chuck is unaware of these changes or he’s being disingenuous.
Now… As to Data Domain’s former blogging strategy and EMC’s blogging strategy.
Which is better? On one hand we have a strategy where blogs are few and far between but carefully thought out and researched. On the other hand, we have a strategy where employees are allowed to make baseless claims about competitors they know nothing about, or make posts that make shocking admissions that make the PR/marketing people cringe.
I’m going to have to say the former is a better approach. It may not be social media friendly, but at least it’s not constantly embarrassing. EMC’s competitors LOVE EMC blogs! They’d LOVE for them to keep doing what they do without any changes.
Now a former competitor (DD) is now in house and has a different perspective on what EMC blogs look like to the rest of the world. Yes, SOME of the blogs contribute thought leadership, but SOME of them are also bullying, potentially libelous, and downright unprofessional. If _I_ were in charge of the EMC blogging policy, I’d say knock yourself out with thought leadership stuff, but you are not allowed to mention our competitors at all. Just talk about what we do and how we do it, not what the other guy does.
Those are my thoughts.
Great post here Curtis, thanks.
I didn’t get too deep into the BRS blogging, other than it had changed but I too have talked to a number of people who are very disappointed.
I appreciate your comments.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again; if your blog entry spends all of it’s time discussing a competitor’s product…I’ll go and check out that product, just to see why you find it so threatening. But this is not just an EMC issue, I’m sure we all can think of blog entries where the point of the entry was to trash another product. Pretty pointless really.
However, then we get into the situation where you post on your product and your deadly rival comes along and trashes your product in the comments. So what do you do? Do you not approve the post and get accused of censorship? Do you approve and not respond? Or do you approve and enter a reasoned debate which you can never win anyway!
And we tend to see most of the bullying stuff, most of the libellous and most the poorly researched stuff in the comments, where it all gets a bit knee-jerk!
Or do you simply post endless PR fluff and not accept any comments?
This blogging stuff is hard but it’s miles better than what went before. It’s a careful balancing act, even those of us who call ourselves independent have to tread carefully. But I’d personally rather see what we have today rather than a state-controlled mouth-piece which just takes the company-line.
Thanks for the comment Martin, I couldn’t have said it better.
BTW: added your link to the blog roll – you’ve got some great info in your blog.
If its commenter/blogger that I know, I post their comments right away without even reading them, then after approving them, I’ll read what it says. It’s a respect thing for me – In general, the community of storage bloggers deserves and gives respect to each other – even if we give each other a very bad time on occasion. I like the challenge and having something to work on – it gets the juices flowing a little faster. There are so many ways of dealing with negative comments that I don’t find them particularly threatening.
But, if there is one thing that bugs me, its competitors posting links back to their own sites. If you are going to show up on somebody else’s property, give them the respect to have the conversation there – if you want to talk about a post or thread on your own site, that’s OK, but I don’t appreciate having links in comments to a competitor’s site. Have I done it? yes. Recently? No.
So I can see where this deal got a bit messy. If you had put this on my blog Steve, I definitely would have posted it – right away without even blinking. After reading it, I probably would have left it as-is, but might have removed the link and inserted a reasonable text description of where to find it. Then we might have had a similar discussion as this one, but maybe more personal, over coffee, beer or whatever.
Hi Steve!
Glad to see the passion. Everyone contributing to this discussion is doing leading-edge stuff — and as you know, there are no guide books when you’re in the lead!
Just wanted to confirm that the company philosophy on blogging, and other 2.0 engagement at EMC remains unchanged. We are, I believe, hugely lucky to have so many leaders (at every level of the org chart) who understand the importance of this new model, and embrace it. I actually quote the EVP of HR, Jack Mollen, fairly often on his comments relating to modern workforce management such as,
o “Treat people like adults.”
o “Lead with trust.” And, my favorite,
o “We’re leveraging the global genius of our workforce.”
Funny enough, as you morph away from universal “command and control” behavior, this also means you no longer control everything/everyone/every divisional decision. As you likely have seen/heard/or experienced, key to EMC’s acquisition strategy is our first rule, “Don’t break it.”
So in the journey we’re all on, I believe we can expect to see frequent instances of ten steps forward, and two steps back. Just makes it all that much more interesting!
Cheers, Polly (PS: thanks for the love in your post)
Polly, thanks so much for taking the time to jump in. I do appreciate it.
I am not going to go down the road of the company policy on blogging, at least as it pertains to BRS before vs. after DD while I was there because it became very different, but lets hope that openness and thought leadership carry us forward and we all will get to have some very passionate discussion about storage because that is what we all do care about.
Thanks again Polly.
Thanks Marc, I vote beer!
Sorry I am bit late on the discussion but thought I’d throw in my 2 cents. One thing that drives me nuts are moderated comments. Does EMC still do this? Speaking as a NetApp-sponsored blogger, I can tell you that I have no ability to approve or deny any comment posted on my blog. I do get email notification after each comment is posted, and if I see something offensive (which sadly I do – spammers see DrDedupe and then I somehow become a Viagra dealer) I can quickly remove that comment. I like this system and recommend it for ALL bloggers.
Thanks, I feel much better now-
DrDedupe
Argh, once I posted my comment about not liking moderated comments I see that this comment is being moderated…where’s my blood pressure medicine??
I am being censored?
DrDedupe
Dr. Dedupe,
Sorry, given the fact that I travel a ton, this is a new blog and I get about 10 ‘comments’ a day in Russian, I try to keep the spam off my blog. Much like Marc, there isn’t anything that I don’t post if it is a comment, I just don’t like to see a bunch of gibberish on the blog after a 10 hour flight to Israel.
Thanks for the comments.