What Do You Think?

[troach]

hum ... I wonder how long it will take for Google to financially bankrupt facebook and take it over for this stunt.

Depending on what false or misleading statements the PR company made or facebook told them to make, I suspect Google has a very good case against facebook.

You really have to wonder about any group's leadership that would do such a thing especially to do it so foolishly and carelessly.


copied from:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43011400/ns/business-us_business/


Facebook admits to being behind Google smear campaign
Company says its PR firm planted story about 2-year-old social feature



By Kashmir Hill
Forbes
5/12/2011



Big news in the world of tech titans clashing today: Facebook admits to the Daily Beast that it was the client behind a PR firm's clumsy attempt to plant a damaging story about a Google social feature that’s almost two years old. The whisper campaign attempted by Burson-Marsteller turned into screaming headlines this week, after USA Today decided to write about the firm's attempts to bamboozle it (after actually being bamboozled and nearly publishing a front-page story about it, says Christopher Soghoian to BetaBeat).

Burson-Marsteller's attempts to plant a story about Google's "Social Circle" — a feature that shows you who Google knows you’re connected to — came to light after privacy advocate Soghoian posted his e-mail exchanges with the PR firm in which it asked him to put his byline on an op-ed that the firm had ghost-written. Sample line from op-ed: "Google Social Circles automatically enables people to trace their contacts’ connections and profile information by crawling and scraping the sites you and your contacts use, like Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Yelp, Yahoo and many others, likely in direct violation of the Terms of Service for those sites, unless those sites have partnered with Google on this 'service,' something else users ought to be aware of." (Soghoian is a colorful character who I profiled for Forbes magazine in November; PR firms, beware.) The PR attempt led to very bad PR for Burson, given that it exaggerated the privacy fears around Social Circles and deceptively presented it as a "new feature."



“Large corporations hiring PR companies to plant negative articles in the press about their competitors isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, but this is the first sign that Facebook has taken to using these kind of sleazy tactics against Google,” writes Mathew Ingram at GigaOm. “And the sense of desperation that it implies about the social network isn’t helped by the fact that Burson-Marsteller couldn’t seem to get anyone interested in writing about the topic it was pushing so hard — despite the fact that privacy is a hot-button issue.”

Google CEO Larry Page announced this year that he wants the company to make a big push into social, pegging Google employees’ bonuses to the company’s social success. It sounds like Facebook is going to do everything it can to make sure Googlers don’t get those bonuses.

It better come up with some better tactics, though. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch excoriated Facebook for this failed attack:


[S]ecretly 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.

One winning aspect of all this for Facebook is how people will pass the news around: mainly by posting it or liking it on Facebook. (As of this writing, 1,585 people had liked Arrington's editorial on Facebook.) It's certainly embarrassing, but Facebook can at least take some solace in the fact that it's still the dominant company when it comes to social networking. At least for now.

Update: A Facebook spokesperson says that "no 'smear’ campaign was authorized or intended."

"Instead, we wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Google Social Circles — just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose. We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst," says the spokesperson. "The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way."

In other words, "Whoops."

He adds: "You and your readers can look at the feature and decide if they have approved of this collection and use of information by clicking here when their Google account is open:
http://www.google.com/s2/search/social. Of course, people who do not have Gmail accounts are still included in this collection but they have no way to view or control it."

Such is the way of the Internet: public information made more public through aggregation. The challenge of our times is getting comfortable with that.

[troach]

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/12/facebook-loses-much-face-in-secret-smear-on-google/


Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

Michael Arrington
May 12, 2011

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. http://pastebin.com/zaeTeJeJ

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.

[troach]

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/12/swallowing-puke/


Sleazy PR Firm Throws Scummy Facebook Under The Sordid Bus

MG Siegler

May 12, 2011

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. TT sağlıkAs 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, fucked 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. Shit.

=
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 bullshit 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.

[troach]

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/12/karma-is-a-bitch/


Facebook, You’re Going To Need A Better Answer For Your Slimeball Stunt

MG Siegler
May 12, 2011

At this point, I think it’s pretty clear what Facebook’s strategy for this whole Burson-Marsteller caught-with-their-pants-down situation is going to be: say as little as possible and move on. And it will work.

Like it or not, Facebook is too integrated into the fabric of the web now for everyone to just walk away. As has been proven time and time again, people will get really angry with them for some misstep, and then totally forget about it a week later. So this is the smart play by Facebook.

But it doesn’t mean it’s the right one.

While Burson-Marsteller came out and gave a bone-headed statement that essentially threw Facebook under the bus, Facebook has only given a one paragraph canned answer in response to publications like LA Times and The New York Times (which sure was soft in their headline on the matter, huh?). The statement:

=
No ‘smear’ campaign was authorized or intended. Instead, we wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Google Social Circles — just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose. We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst. The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way.
=

I’m not sure I’ve ever read something so disingenuous. With every point, they go out of their to deflect from the key questions:

1.Why use Burson-Marsteller for this matter and not your own internal PR team? Or even the PR team that you keep on retainer for other work (Outcast)?

2.Why not authorize Burson-Marsteller to say your name when asked?

3.Why do this behind-the-scenes at all? Why not just write a blog post about it if it’s such a clear problem that everyone is missing?

4.And if you really feel Google is in the wrong here, and you can fully make that case, why not just block them — or sue?

5.Why is Facebook resorting to this nonsense? Isn’t this kind of thing weak companies do when they’re scared?

6.For a company so concerned with real identity, isn’t this all a bit ironic?
Earlier today, we reached out to Facebook to ask all of these questions. They declined to comment on the record for any of them. Instead, all we have is the lame paragraph above. So I’m going to take this opportunity to answer them myself, based on my assumptions — again, since Facebook isn’t talking.

Here we go:

1.Facebook clearly did this in an attempt to remove themselves from the situation. They wanted this information out there, but did not want to be associated with it. They sort of allude to this in their statement, but they don’t address how slimy this is. If you’re going to call someone out on something, call them out. Don’t anonymously hire a PR firm to talk to journalists to call them out on your behalf. It’s cowardly and a scumbag move.

2.This is obviously related to the first question. Facebook did not want to be associated with this situation. Of course, by going out of their way to make sure they weren’t even named when Burson-Marsteller was asked, is again, slimy. If you’re going to put something out there, have the balls to attach your name to it.

3.Again, they did not want this tied to them. But had they come out in public, it would have been much better received (to say the least). Sure, much of the press would have focused on the war between Facebook and Google, but that’s happening now times a million worse because of the way this all went down. Publicly calling a rival out would have taken some guts, and Facebook clearly didn’t have any here.

4.This is where the hypocrisy really kicks in. Facebook has been pushing and pushing users to open up more of their data to share with everyone. As a result, Google can see it and use it in products like Social Circle. Danny Sullivan has a great rundown of this hypocrisy. Facebook wants it both ways here. And they can’t have it both ways. Too bad. And if they feel Google is actually doing something malicious with this data (which the journalists pitched rejected the notion of), they should sue. (Don’t expect that to happen.)

5.That’s the most surprising thing here. Facebook is the prince of the Internet at the moment. The widely held perception is that their ascension to the throne seems inevitable as Google descends. They simply did not need to pull this stunt. Yet they clearly felt they had to. Interesting.

6.Yes. Yes, it is. Very.

Make no mistake, this entire maneuver by Facebook was about manipulation. Whether or not they had malicious intent, Facebook’s aim was to quietly manipulate both the press and the public into seeing things their way.

In their ideal world, Burson-Marsteller would have taken this, pitched it to a group of journalists/bloggers, stories questioning Google’s tactics would have been written, and Facebook’s name would have only been brought up as the victims.

Instead, the opposite happened. Karma is a bitch.