An anonymous blogger (as far as I can tell) at SciFiHiFi.com, who is apparently an Apple employee, makes a case against business blogging. His (? her?) jumping off point is a recent post by PR specialist and blog evangelist Steve Rubel titled “Why Apple Employees Will Blog in Revolt”. While Rubel suggests Apple should be blogging, as I also did recently, SciFiHiFi guy disagrees, suggesting that not blogging is part of Apple’s “Think Different” mystique.

Obviosly, I don’t agree, but the post is worth reading, if just for the contrarian argument. One point he/she makes is “I personally think that every official corporate weblog I‚Äôve ever seen (from Microsoft‚Äôs Channel 9 to the Google Blog) has come across as rather contrived and trendy.” True, that’s a danger of some blogs (though I happen to like Channel 9, even if I don’t often read it; Google Blog, on the other hand, is certainly a disappointment), but he/she conveniently overlooks some much better business blogs, most notably in the context of Microsoft being Robert Scoble’s, which is widely read and respected.

Anyway, SciFiHiFi’s implication is that there is a danger for a company like Apple, the success of which relies in large part these days on underpromising and over-delivering (according to its fan base, anyway), is that a blog would reveal too much. I never get this argument against business blogs. You trust employees to grant interviews to the NY Times and the WSJ and not to reveal too much in the face of touch questions from seasoned jouranlists, don’t you? Why then should some trusted employee not be able to keep their mouth shut about company secrets on a weblog? The blog could be about any number of things other than company secrets and new feature previews, such as a showcase of “Made on a Mac” projects around the web, or whatever.

Also, SciFiHiFi makes the case that corporations are not people and they shouldn’t try to sound like people, hence business blogs sound artifcial. But the whole point of a good company blog, like Scoble’s, is it’s clearly written by a person with an individual point of view, thereby humanizing the company, as we all know that companies are made up of individuals. Given that Apple all but invented the job title of “evangelist,” I think it’s conspicuous that they don’t have a blog. “Think Different” is fine when it makes strategic sense, but don’t go against the flow just for brand consistency even when it’s not the right thing to do.

(But don’t get me started on Apple; I’m a former Apple die hard who was eventually dragged onto the PC by an old job, and no amount of trend ads will ever get me to switch back to Mac. But that’s another story.)

Sci-Fi Hi-Fi: Redmond Blogs, Cupertino Codes