Facebook - Live by PR, die by PR

Very funny moment today on Techmeme - two articles, one below the other - first one is Dan Lyons on the Daily Beast and says "Facebook Busted by clumsy smear campaign":

The social network secretly hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about the search giant, The Daily Beast's Dan Lyons reveals—a caper that is blowing up in their face, and escalating their war.

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.”

Second one is Bloomberg and says "Why Facebook needs Sheryl Sandberg" - to quote:

Ever since Silicon Valley started turning out companies with beautiful growth charts, entrepreneurs and their investors have talked about the need for "adult supervision"—a seasoned executive who can take over a startup from its inexperienced founders, guide it through the hazards of hyperkinetic expansion, and convert a great idea or breakthrough technology into a bona fide business. Today, however, young founders generally want to remain at the helm of their companies, and there's a new shorthand for the kind of leader who's willing to serve as a second-in-command, complementing without overshadowing the wunderkind entrepreneur: a Sheryl Sandberg. As in, "we're growing, but God knows how we'll make money. What we really need is a Sheryl Sandberg."

That's a more traditional PR puff piece, but the juxtaposition is tres droll - talk about bad timing for a piece about excellent adult supervision!

Here is the top paragraph of the churnalism plant-piece:

I wanted to gauge your interest in authoring an op-ed this week for a top-tier media outlet on an important issue that I know you’re following closely.

The topic: Google’s sweeping violations of user privacy. Google, as you know, has a well-known history of infringing on the privacy rights of America’s Internet users. Not a year has gone by since the founding of the company where it has not been the focus of front-page news detailing its zealous approach to gathering information – in many cases private and identifiable information - about online users.

And this from Facebook of all people - I mean, whoddathunkit?

There is probably reams of stuff that could (will) be written about "why" and what it all signifies - but IMHO its in their DNA, end of. Quite where this leaves Burson Marsteller, the PR agency doing the smear....sorry, placement of differently-viewed narratives to educate consumers (what's that - you didn't know PR Agencies did this sort of stuff? Tsk. The PR Code of Ethics would make PT Barnum blush ) remains to be seen...... those that live by the PR sword etc

Update - Burson-Marsteller issued an apology, saying:

"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.

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.”

"Should have been declined"....aka they got caught PT Barnum is indeed blushing......