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Thread: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

  1. #1
    Senior Member glassngrass's Avatar
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    Default Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

    http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/12/fac...ear-on-google/
    This article by Michael Arrington

    Facebook secretly hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google, says Dan Lyons in a jaw dropping story at the Daily Beast.

    For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.

    The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”

    Not good.

    The source emails are here.

    I’ve been patient with Facebook over the years as they’ve had their privacy stumbles. They’re forging new ground, and it’s not an exaggeration to say they’re changing the world’s notions on what privacy is. Give them time. They’ll figure it out eventually.

    But secretly paying a PR firm to pitch bloggers on stories going after Google, even offering to help write those stories and then get them published elsewhere, is not just offensive, dishonest and cowardly. It’s also really, really dumb. I have no idea how the Facebook PR team thought that they’d avoid being caught doing this.

    First, it lets the tech world know that Facebook is scared enough of what Google’s up to to pull a stunt like this. Facebook isn’t supposed to be scared, ever, about anything. Supreme confidence in their destiny is the the way they should be acting.

    Second, it shows a willingness by Facebook to engage in cowardly behavior in battle. It’s hard to trust them on other things when we know they’ll engage in these types of campaigns.

    And third, some of these criticisms of Google are probably valid, but it doesn’t matter any more. The story from now on will only be about how Facebook went about trying to secretly smear Google, and got caught.

    The truth is Google is probably engaging in some somewhat borderline behavior by scraping Facebook content, and are almost certainly violating Facebook’s terms and conditions. But many people argue, me included, that the key data, the social graph, really should belong to the users, not Facebook. And regardless, users probably don’t mind that this is happening at all. It’s just Facebook trying to protect something that it considers to be its property.

    Next time Facebook should take a page from Google’s playbook when they want to trash a competitor. Catch them in the act and then go toe to toe with them, slugging it out in person. Right or wrong, no one called Google a coward when they duped Bing earlier this year.

    You’ve lost much face today, Facebook.
    David
    Mr Sparkle Car Spa

  2. #2
    Senior Member glassngrass's Avatar
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    Default Sleazy PR Firm Throws Scummy Facebook Under The Sordid Bus

    http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/12/swallowing-puke/
    Article by MG Siegler

    It’s pretty rare for a story to be one part sad, one part fascinating, and twenty parts sleazy. Luckily, Facebook and Burson-Marsteller have just handed exactly that to us on a silver platter.

    As you’ve undoubtedly seen by now, last night The Daily Beast’s Dan Lyons’ broke the story wide open about how the social network hired the PR firm to plant negative stories about rival Google in the press. As Mike wrote last night, it’s “not just offensive, dishonest and cowardly. It’s also really, really dumb.” And it keeps getting better.

    Now one of the sleazy companies in this sordid affair, Burson-Marsteller, is throwing the other sleazy company, Facebook, under the bus.

    In an email sent to PRNewser this morning, the PR firm is confirming their involvement (as if that was still in question), defending themselves and their actions, and blaming Facebook for bringing the work to them in the first place.

    In other words, they took the job, ****ed it up, then blamed the client. Brilliant.

    Let’s break down the Burson-Marsteller’s statement:

    Now that Facebook has come forward, we can confirm that we undertook an assignment for that client.

    If they hadn’t come forward, we wouldn’t have either. But since they’re potentially ruining us, screw you too, Facebook.

    The client requested that its name be withheld on the grounds that it was merely asking to bring publicly available information to light and such information could then be independently and easily replicated by any media. Any information brought to media attention raised fair questions, was in the public domain, and was in any event for the media to verify through independent sources.

    Facebook was asking us to do something shady, which we were totally fine with at the time. After all, this information is public, so why not do humanity a favor and pitch it to journalists for a smear campaign? We were really just doing journalists a favor — how’d they miss this golden information anyway? Maybe we should be journalists (again). At least we know to do our homework when getting pitched something sleazy. Oh wait, the journalists didn’t bite. So our argument trying to throw journalists under the bus doesn’t work either. ****.

    Whatever the rationale, this was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined. When talking to the media, we need to adhere to strict standards of transparency about clients, and this incident underscores the absolute importance of that principle.

    After we just fed you that bull**** excuse, here’s the real deal: we shouldn’t have done this. Or perhaps more accurately, we shouldn’t have agreed to terms under which we were likely to be caught. Next time we take one of these assignments, we’ll simply throw the client under the bus immediately so we look like the good guys to the journalists and public. Or we’ll cover our asses better. And ask for more money.

    Scummy. Sleazy. Sordid. A true class act.
    David
    Mr Sparkle Car Spa

  3. #3
    Senior Member glassngrass's Avatar
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    David
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