Given that I’m fielding questions on what I will/won’t blog more and more frequently these days, I wanted to repoint to the primitive privacy policy I wrote up for this space a while back. But in simple terms, here’s the deal: a big part of my job is keeping secrets, be they product plans, new hires, M&A activity, whatever. If I can’t keep secrets, I can’t do my job. Simple as that. I’m told there are firms that will not work under NDAs, but we’re not one of them.
What makes all of that easier is that this blog isn’t now, nor has it ever been, about scoops. Indeed, many of my more analytical Q&A type posts come a day or more following major announcements – leading me to claim at one point, “You heard it here last.” So despite the fact that I may pick up things here and there a bit early, such as yubnub.org which Scoble just got to today (and the only reason I saw it earlier was that Jonathan was kind enough to email me about it), I’m typically going to be late with news. I’m not going to run with news unless and until I know that I can. Period, end of story.
So whether you’re a vendor looking to discuss your latest roadmap, or an enterprise making a major product decision, just realize that my job here is not to be a reporter, not to be a news hound. My job is to analyze the news, not break it. I leave that to the folks that do it for a living, or whose blogs thrive on that sort of attention.
The irony of this note is of course that this is just my word, so that if you didn’t trust me in the first place this is not likely to make any difference. But I thought at the very least I’d provide some background on why I do things the way I do, in the dim hope that it might provide some supporting evidence to my claims.
One final comment – this entry should not be construed as me asking people not to be clear on what’s private and what’s not, because being explicit particularly in complex situations where some the boundaries of public/private are blurred is never a bad thing. No, this note is instead intended to sooth the concerns of the folks that might believe that anything they say or write to me is fair game for publication. That’s just not how I work, and thanks to the persistence of blogs I have evidence to support that. For those that still aren’t convinced, ask around. If any of this is unclear, or anybody has specific questions or concerns or things I left out, feel free to drop me a line. I’d be happy to discuss this with you, privately 😉
