Writes Lionel Menchaca, Dell's digital media manager on the Direct2Dell corporate blog:

I can't speak for Apple, but I can give you Dell's perspective. Media coverage isn't the real issue—it's really about our customers' experience when they deal with Dell. No question that incidents of poor customer service resulted in bad PR for us. . . Could we have handled that situation better than we did? You bet. For us, there wasn't an arbitrary tipping point—things were bad so we've tried to fix them and will continue to do so.

Dell has changed its strategy from "look but don't touch" at blogger and message board complaints about its customer service to one in which it tries to engage unhappy customers there. Apple, which once hauled bloggers into court to get their sources after writing things company execs didn't like, has backed off and since achieved an uneasy, but seemingly peaceful, co-existence with the blogosphere.

"We are making efforts to be more forthcoming. We entered the blogosphere in part to take on negative issues," Dell's Menchaca added. "Will we make more mistakes along the way? Sure, but we are listening and learning as we go."

There's another constituency for Dell besides unhappy customers, though, that is not going away -- uneasy investors.

There is a din of chatter on financial message boards from some who not pleased that the company hasn't yet filed two mandatory quarterly reports with the SEC, that it has cancelled meetings with Wall Street analysts and that the last time it posted earnings, it cancelled its regular conference call with investors and analysts to explain the details. Sometimes those messages blur together with complaints about Dell products and services. (The Dell message board on the Yahoo! financial site tends to underscore this point.)

Scoble now gives Dell points for Menchaca's message of engaging bloggers. Dell's investor constituency continues to wait.