The Warring States of NPF - Facebook defaces Google's locker, passes notes in study hall calling goog "LAME-O"

No seriously what the fuck is this I don't even

Quote:

Facebook admitted this week that it hired a high-powered public relations firm to smear competitor Google, using what one insider calls "furtive and creepy" tactics.

The social-networking site admitted on Thursday that it hired WPP owned PR firm Burson-Marstellar to focus attention on the use of consumers' personal data on Google Social Circles, one of Google's less known social networking features.

The tactics were questionable, however, says Burson-Marsteller's former UK chairman.

Terence Fane-Saunders, who worked for Burson-Marsteller in the 1980s and now runs his own PR firm, Chelgate, wondered "what on earth happened" to the firm, criticizing their tactics.

"If senior B-M professionals are now seen to be operating like shadowy, backstreet spin merchants, you have to wonder about the continuing value of that example," he said.

Burson-Marsteller confirmed on Thursday that it was secretly hired by Facebook to run an anonymous campaign against Google.

It contacted several journalists and privacy experts without revealing the identity of its client.

"In this grubby little attempt to seed negative stories without disclosing their source, they were denying the media (and that means the public, and that means you and me) the opportunity to assess the value of those stories," Saunders said. "If you don't know the source, you can't judge motive."

Responding to the backlash, Facebook said it should have presented the issues in a "serious and transparent" way.

"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," the company said in a statement.

Burson-Marsteller said on Friday that it would not fire the two ex-journalists involved in the smear campaign - former CNBC technology correspondent Jim Goldman and former political journalist John Mercurio - who joined the PR agency relatively recently after long careers in the media.

The pair will receive receive extra "training" and Burson-Marsteller said it intends to redistribute its code of ethics to all employees in the wake of the scandal.

"We have talked through our policies and procedures with each individual involved in the program and made it clear this cannot happen again," said Pat Ford, Burson's USA president, in an article in PR Week USA.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/...le-smear/all/1

Quote:

In the annals of shady public relations stunts, Facebook�s attempt to surreptitiously plant negative � and highly misleading � stories about Google into leading media outlets will surely go down as one of the most ham-handed in recent memory.

Everyone is running for cover: Facebook has owned up to the campaign � but denies it was a �smear� � and the powerful PR firm it hired to plant the stories (and which protected its client�s identity) says it regrets ever taking the job, and is parting ways with the social networking giant.

Facebook, you see, had employed a public relations firm called Burson-Marsteller, one of the most powerful PR firms in the country, to orchestrate a campaign designed to get stories published in the mainstream media portraying an obscure Google Gmail feature called Social Circle as a violation of �the personal privacy rights of millions of Americans.�

This was a strategy with at least two goals:

Weaken Google, which has social media ambitions. The two companies are in a huge battle for control of your online ID, and Google has skewered Facebook for not allowing Facebook users to export their contacts, and not letting the search giant index its content, and;
Deflect attention from the biggest criticism of Facebook: that it plays fast and loose with the privacy of its members, always veering to the side of less.

As several reports have detailed this week, two former journalists now employed by Burson � John Mercurio, late of Roll Call, CNN, and National Journal; and CNBC�s erstwhile Silicon Valley correspondent Jim Goldman � were making the rounds pitching this hooey to various outlets in an attempt to capitalize on Google�s increasing tangles with the feds, and intense public interest in online privacy.

Among those contacted was Christopher Soghoian, a well-known internet-privacy researcher and blogger, who promptly posted the e-mail he received from Burson�s Mercurio asking if he was interested in �authoring an op-ed this week for a top-tier media outlet� about �Google�s sweeping violations of user privacy.� Mercurio refused to disclose his client to Soghoian.

�The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day � without their permission,� Mercurio inveighed.

But Soghoian, who�s been extremely tough on Google over privacy and data retention, wasn�t buying what Burson was selling and turned the tables on Mercurio by posting the e-mail.

�I get pitches on a daily basis, but it�s usually a company talking how great their product, so this one made me immediately suspicious, even more so when they wouldn�t reveal who they were working for,� Soghoian told BetaBeat on Thursday. �It seemed pretty clear what they wanted was my name and I could get away with as little work as possible, they would place it and ghost-write, they would just use my name.�

�I really think this was an attempt by one large company to stab a dagger in the back of a competitor,� Soghoian added.

We now know, thanks the The Daily Beast�s Dan Lyons, (who knows a thing or two about keeping a secret), that Burson�s client was none other than social networking giant Facebook. Set aside, for the moment, Facebook�s hypocrisy over privacy � remember the fiasco over Beacon, a program that showed what you bought and movies you rented to your friends automatically?

�Facebook is no better than Google on these issues, so to make these attacks they have to hide behind these PR companies,� Soghoian told BetaBeat. �If they tried it in public, under their own name, people would laugh in their faces.�

Apparently Social Network wasn't kidding, Facebook is literally run by billionaire manchildren.

It doesn't even amaze me that they would do this so much as that they would do it so badly and then get so openly caught out doing it. Like apparently the entire plan was "pay these guys to call a bunch of newspapers, and tell those newspapers 'yo google sucks, you should do a news story about how google sucks'". And I mean even that would maybe have worked except for some nutty reason they called competent, ethical writers, who then went "who the fuck are these guys" and tracked this back to where it came from.

...Fun fact, apparently this company that Facebook hired is run by... the same guy that ran Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

I MEAN, REALLY GUYS

Hire someone who knows how to, like... succeed at things, next time?