The Friendlier Bill Gates?
from the uh.--not-really. dept
An editor at News.com seems positively amazed that Bill Gates would stoop so low as to agree to be interviewed by a blogger, and goes on to suggest that every other tech execs is somehow hiding from the press. This seems a little silly. First of all, he's picking and choosing which execs he thinks are being quiet, and that's misleading. You could claim that while Scott McNealy has been quieter in the press, thanks to his blog, Jonathan Schwartz has been much louder than even McNealy was at his loudest -- conserving the braggadocio of Sun. Besides, Gates' decision to be interviewed by a blogger probably has a lot more to do with Microsoft's new blog offering than any mellowing out on Gates' part. Access to tech execs comes and goes as necessary -- and it doesn't seem like there's any major difference between now and in the past, other than the fact that News.com seems a bit upset that the tech execs don't go to News.com first. If anything, it seems that, thanks to executive blogs, executives are being more open than ever. Hell, whoever would have thought that GM's chairman would start a blog?
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good interview
But the guy at CNET is wrong that this is unusual or out of character for either Gates or CEOs. Those guys love spinning their stories, and they'd better, cuz it's a big part of their jobs. They'll conference in on CNBC or do interviews with the mainstream press, the trade press and local newspapers, then address a meeting with Wall Street analysts. Then they'll fly out to a big customer site or prospect to help close a deal. And Gates and McNealy have learned some of the old arts of salesmanship - you get credibility if you don't bash the competition 100 percent of the time, and acknowledge a few of your own mistakes and disappointments, while of course pointing out how your new products are absolute killers.
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?
Dare I Call up Jealousy?
Or is it some Other Sin?
Jeez, you just lost a fan by not just giving rights to Gizmodo.
WTH?
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Re: ?
Besides, we clearly linked to the Gizmodo piece.
We're big fans of Gizmodo and have linked to them many times. What would we possiby be jealous about?!?
Oh well. I guess, once again, I forgot that humor tags don't work in HTML.
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