Rumours and reports about Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ health and whereabouts have been rife since the weekend, when it was claimed that the company founder underwent a liver transplant during his leave of absence. It nows seems that Jobs had made at least one appearance back at Apple HQ, and could well be back full time already. But the hush hush manner of his return says a great deal about how companies should to relate to the media, both online and print.

The New York Times published an interesting piece on the effort that Apple goes to keep the cult of secrecy going at Cupertino, with staff limiting contact with the press and senior execs even feeding lies to employees to see where leaks appear. It’s an eye-opening piece, and well worth a read.

The general tone of the article implies that Apple still deals with the media as companies did in the 1980s, rather than in the web 2.0 era, where multinational companies like Dell embrace social media, actively blogging, tweeting and churning out photos for all to see and use on a Flickr photostream. It’s a fair point, and an approach fewer companies, tech ones especially, are using still.

And yet, that still plays in Apple’s favour. Two of the world’s most popular and valuable blogs, MacRumors and AppleInsider, are dedicated to the pursuit of digging up whatever titbits of Apple future tech they can find. Any new Apple launch immediately trends on Twitter, and while Apple can take its online store down for hours at a time to update it with shiny new products, it more than makes up for it with boosted business in the hours afterwards, as anticipation is cranked up no end.

But Apple is the exception that proves the rule here. The public couldn’t give a cow’s udder about any other company that tries to enforce quite the same regime of secrecy. If Apple’s relationship with its customers is still one way, many others are using social media to open up the conversation (Take O2 and its excellent use of Twitter, as I highlighted the other week), bringing in John and Jane Smith and making a giant corporation feel that bit less impersonal. It’s something that we recognise here at Republic across our portfolio, particularly with sites like Nokia Conversations and NokNok.

Of course, I could be wrong and my bosses have been working on some super secret project that goes completely against what I just said. I’m off to landgrab RepublicPublishingInsider.com…

Tags: Apple, social media, twitter, web

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