Thanks Engadget
Dear Peter, Ryan and Joshua: — Thank you for the very thoughtful post about Palm. I really appreciate the fact that you guys and others care enough to take the time to write such a comprehensive list of actions. I forwarded it to our entire executive staff and many others at Palm have read it.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two days after Engadget's open letter calling for a Palm intervention, Ed Colligan has answered on Palm's own blog — not with a rebuttal but with a thank-you, confirming he forwarded the piece to the entire executive staff. The gesture lands at a low ebb: Deutsche Bank's Jonathan Goldberg reported this week that the Foleo sub-laptop has hit snags and been delayed, and June brought confirmation that Palm is selling a 25% stake to an unnamed private-equity partner amid mounting smartphone competition.
The reply matters because of where it appears — a company blog addressing three named bloggers directly — and because it concedes the diagnosis by accepting the prescription list 'comprehensive.' With no syndicated pickup and no public reaction threads yet recorded, the note reads as a direct channel between Palm's executive suite and enthusiast media rather than a PR campaign.
First-order effects
- Engadget's Peter, Ryan and Joshua gain demonstrated leverage: an open letter written on August 21 was acknowledged and internally circulated by Palm's CEO within two days, validating intervention-style editorials as a way into a company's decision loop.
- Palm's executive staff now owns the critique publicly — having accepted the list, the company invites scrutiny against its own roadmap, including the delayed Foleo and the sub-$200 youth-market Treo ('Gandolf') slated for Q4.
Second-order effects
- Other handset makers under pressure face a raised bar for responding to blogger criticism: silence now reads as evasion when a peer has modeled direct executive engagement on a rival outlet's terms.
- The private-equity partner evaluating its 25% stake gets a fresh signal that Palm's leadership treats community and press sentiment as material — relevant diligence input while smartphone competition intensifies.
Third-order effects
- If executive-to-blogger replies become routine, corporate communications shifts from press-release gatekeeping to named-person dialogue on independent platforms, giving enthusiast sites like Engadget agenda-setting power traditionally held by business dailies.
- For Palm specifically, publicly embracing outside critique ahead of a restructuring points toward leadership changes or strategic resets being negotiated with new financial partners — though the shape of any reset remains unconfirmed.
The trend: Consumer-tech companies are shifting crisis communications from controlled press statements toward public, named exchanges with influential bloggers, whose editorials increasingly function as intervention memos executives answer in kind.