HP’s buyout of Palm may have won them webOS, but it doesn’t seem to have won them many friends within the company. There are only so many names within Palm that are so oft-mentioned that I could name them off hand — and of those, the talent seems to be disappearing left and right. First to go was interface mastermind Matias Duarte, followed shortly thereafter by Rich Dellinger, best known for coming up with webOS’ incredible notifications system.
And now, they’ve lost another; I’m hearing from an unshakably solid source that Lynn Fox, Vice President of Public Relations, left the company earlier this week.
Does the name sound familiar? It ought to — she was one of the handful of major talents that Palm managed to snag from Apple prior to the launch of the Pre, having served as Apple’s Director of Mac PR from 2006 to 2008 (and their Director of Corporate PR from 2000 to 2004.)
This is a pretty big loss for Palm, just days before their acquisition by HP is finalized.
So, where’s Lynn headed next? No one’s quite sure — including Lynn, it seems. On her Facebook profile, her current employer is listed as “Consult Until-I-Find-Another-Job Consulting, LTD”, with a description reading:
I respectfully declined the opportunity to join HP after its acquisition of Palm, so am looking for my next career adventure.
Go get’er, talent scouts.
Maybe she should join RIM. They need talent when it comes to PR and marketing.
Yeah I read up on her more and she seems to be pretty good. I think maybe RIM would be a good choice.
Her departure is not a loss to Palm or HP. Are you trying to spin news away from the iPhone 4 fisaco again Techcrunch?
If she were that good at PR, people would not have such a poor opinion of Palm’s recent devices, given the fact that that they run the best mobile OS. If you ask me, she failed totally to change perception of Palm as an also ran.
Good riddance.
I’ll welcome other departures too. Time to clean house.
Yes, we’re absolutely trying to spin news away from the iPhone 4 issues.
Thats why we keep writing about it.
Greg, stop trolling your won blog! If you dont have something nice to say, then dont say it, even if you do sarcasm should be your last resort.
People have poor opinions of Palm’s recent devices because they suck. PR doesn’t change the quality of one’s product.
No, they don’t. Obviously, the ignorant remain ignorant. Mostly because of poor advertising and the PR people who clearly sucked.
I’m sure you’re a Pre owner since you’re defending.. out of curiosity, how many times have you had to return your Pre due to a defect?
If you have no clue what I’m talking about, head on over to http://forums.precentral.net
By the way, I owned a Pre .. love WebOS and think it has great potential – as it further matures – but the Pre is something to be desired.. you can’t deny the hardware SUCKS. Good PR doesn’t make up for that.
John, your idiotic comment is without merit. Opinion is one thing, facts quite another. WebOS still is quite advanced from a UE perspective relative to both iPOS4 and Adroid. It may not last but we’ll see.
actually they all had overinflated egos over there at palm.. until reality hit. Reason they all leave because the sale to HP was basically a liquidation… PALM is in the deadpool now… quite simple
If she were the only one leaving Palm, this might not be a story, but with major engineering and design talent leaving, it’s another datapoint in a bad trend for Palm’s ecosystem.
Not to be jerk but she was working for Apple when it was on an upswing I doubt her contribution to the company made her a play maker even at that level. I’m sure she did her job and did it well but I’m also sure we are giving her more credit than she deserves. I would say this for just about anyone in her position.
Palm’s acquisition of her was not just an effort at talent fleecing but also a desperate attempt to get some of that Apple Mojo to rub off on them. At this point I don’t think any of the talent at Apply, with the exception of Jobs, could ever really help Apple’s competitors. Not for a lack of actual talent but for a lack of public awareness of who that person is and what they contribute. RIM and Google have the only real effective strategy A-bomb the hell out of the market with massive amount similar product. Palm may have a better or best product, to be honest I don’t know if they do or don’t. Here’s the important thing no one really cares, except tech enthusiasts. The rest of us just want whatever the latest and greatest is according to the consensus of the general public and right now that’s anything prefixed with and “i” and made by Apple.
Some other guy put a comment about this being non news before me. Why have you removed his post?
“I’m hearing from an unshakably solid source that Lynn Fox, Vice President of Public Relations, left the company earlier this week.”
You state this like you think it’s a big loss?
Sorry, PR talent is commodity because it doesn’t require subject matter expertise. A hot shot at Apple can be a hot shot at BP the next week. There is a very large pool of PR people to draw from.
Sorry, but you’re dead wrong. Talent is one thing, but the relationships with consumer, business and trade media in all categories (broadcast, print and online) are another. It takes years to establish and grow those relationships.
Any company that snags Lynn will instantly have inroads to just about any major outlet you can think of – particularly in the consumer technology space.
Commodity? Hardly. Companies bust their asses to get covered on TechCrunch. This is about 10 levels beyond.
And Palm was mostly invisible on Techcrunch. The only time they reported anything was usually when there was bad news. On that count she failed to make inroad with an important account.
But then early on when the Palm Pre was released and Arrignton was again angry at Apple for something stupid, he only briefly considered the Palm Pre as a viable alternative and then put all his eggs with Google. Since then, he has only defected to go back and forth between Google or Apple. That the Palm Pre was a superior device to the 3GS, he never considered that a possibility.
Ms. Fox’s job would have been to play up on the positives of the Palm platform and downplay the negatives such as the hardware deficiencies with early Pres – But she hasn’t. So ever since, even if all the Pres from August to now have been rock solid, there is still a perception that they have shoddy hardware.
Other companies like Apple and HTC also produce clunkers, but you hardly see Techcrunch dismiss their star products on a continual basis the way TC and others in the media have dismissed the Pre and the Pixi.
The Pixi is an even better device and extremely well built, but for the past year, I don’t believe that one article related to the Pixi has ever made it to the front page of TC. In fact most articles related to Palm only make it on the home page when they are negative. For example, the news of the official conclusion of the buyout of Palm by HP didn’t make it on TC.com, only on MobileCrunch. But this story about Ms. Fox is front page news. It’s been like that for over a year. Only the bad stuff about Palm gets to be spotlighted by TC. All the positives are discreetly posted on the junior site that no one bothers to visit to the same extent.
Well, if Ms. Fox had any sway or great working relationships with media outlets like TC, they would not have treated her employer with such disdain repeatedly. Just like the Google and Apple PR guys that hammer TC and other similar sites on a continual basis, Palm would have had a better and more positive coverage. PR is cheap compared to advertising. It’s all about relationships and talking to the media on an ongoing basis. Not just when one has a press release to post.
Oh, so not so! Ms. Fox was a disaster and my guess is HP wouldn’t have her. She did Palm and the Pre no favors. Let her be snagged by the next victim.
@Christian – I beg to differ. The networking you’re referring to is more important in a startup context. An established brand like HP opens its own doors. Experience and execution is more important. Remember, we’re talking about PR, not marketing.
I bought a Palm over the iPhone recently [ after three years ]. After a few days I know it which is better – Palm.
hey nice web,, do you wanna link exchange??
please come
I see TC removed my comment about how they only put negative news on Palm on their home page but how all the positive stuff and even new product announcement like the Pixi are relegated to mobileCrunch only.
I guess they don’t like their readers pointing their flaws.
Bah, it’s back now…
You’re a whiney little bitch
I too laughed at the big loss of the head of PR for a loosing smart phone OS.
HP does billions of dollars in sales a MONTH. Do you think they care about the departure of a PR person from one of the companies they just ate for lunch?
NOOOO!!!!
Come on TC, quit trying to get people to think that every time someone quits that it’s a high profile loss. It’s nothing, and this PR person is nothing but a has been according to HP.
@Travis: Taking your comment into account I’m starting to think that these sorts of articles is more TC’s way of plugging an individual for potential employers. Letting other companies know that someone is out there and she might be of use to them. Maybe her PR skills and network reach further than we thought, and she was able to use TC to her advantage as massive add for her job search. hmmmmmm…..
Definitely a big loss.
It may be a small loss for you but a big loss to marketers.
Overhead positions are usually the first to go after an acquisition. Why maintain two separate HR, PR, accounting departments when you can utilize one? More synergy, less money.
Yeah I agree It may be a small loss for you but a big loss to the marketers. Great post.
Why is this such a surprise? Slow news day? It’s quite common for an acquired entity to suffer a talent drain, especially in staff or administrative positions. PR drains are no big loss, even if she is a quality marketer. The loss of engineering and design talent should be a big concern but marketing? Please save your valuable blogspace for something meaningful.
This is not surprising. HP has a fairly efficient integration process, but it only concerns itself with engineering talent. Much of the other functions will be put into the HP machine. In a downsizing company (especially in Marketing) no one will want to save the job of someone who poses a competitive threat to their own job.
It will be interesting to see how long until the Palm brand is replaced by an HP-given moniker. I think the EDS name lasted a year.
Ah, that’s too bad. I always enjoyed having Lynn completely ignore our requests for comment.
Michael, you’re so full of crap it’s unreal. I’ve sent you countless emails that have gone unreturned, and my team always gets back to your writers.
Take that comment, and go somewhere with it.
[If you are who you say you are...] Isn’t Palm in Sunnyvale and TechCrunch (then) in Palo Alto? Seems like a very short drive for a personal drop-in visit if he was that important to warrant “countless emails” that were not returned. Go on the offensive. As a product marketer, that is what I would want my PR team to do for me and my portfolio. Hell, I would have personally gone with you to pitch the product/story if he was that important to talk to…
And no, I do not know, and have never met Michael Arrington. But, I do know, and have met several kick-ass PR people in my time in the valley.
Ahm, politics makes strange bedfellows .
Techcrunch only used your departure to pile on Palm again. Ignore Harrington’s comments. I can vouch gfor your team responding quickly to folks personally.
Good luck in your future endeavor.
So let me get this straight: a person that was doing PR at Apple (which sucks at PR from the dawn of time) and moved to Palm where she kept sucking, or at least ran an incredibly self damaging PR strategy, now is a big loss for the company?
I think they got lucky.
I’ll bet she was given the opportunity to stay, but not at a VP level. It was probably viewed as a demotion.
Quality sells itself, pure and simple…good products, good people, good ideas, good goals…if you need a PR wing to do anything beyond essentially media customer service, receiving incoming press queries & requests, then you’re already doing something very wrong.
So if quality products sell without good pr and marketing are you suggesting that Macbooks are crap because they sell infinitely less than windows computers?
Palm – great product bad sales…. maybe this is what needs to happen. New people great sales ;-)