Facebook Hired PR Agency to Slam Google

In an awesome bit of nerd warfare news, Facebook hired a PR agency to get negative articles written about Google. Considering the somewhat shady origins of The Facebook, aggressive and morally questionable tactics shouldn’t be too surprising. Still, it was a brazen move that was reckless at best and idiotic at worst. Here’s more from The Daily Beast’s Dan Lyons:

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.

But who was the mysterious unnamed client? While fingers pointed at Apple and Microsoft, The Daily Beast discovered that it’s a company nobody suspected — Facebook.

There are several amusing things about this situation. First, I can’t believe that Facebook even did this. Did it really think that it wouldn’t come back to haunt the company? Considering the opinionated and informal nature of modern tech journalism, of course someone was going to rat out the PR flack and of course someone would connect the dots back to Facebook.

Secondly, I love that this story was written by Dan Lyons. Some of you know him as Fake Steve Jobs. That’s awesome.

Source

Author: RPadTV

https://rpad.tv

7 thoughts on “Facebook Hired PR Agency to Slam Google”

    1. They compete in the social space. That is to say Facebook currently dominates and Google aggressively wants in on the space but has failed repeatedly.

    2. Also, if you use the Alexa toolbar and you go to Google.com, you'll see in the bar that Google is ranked #1 (for obvious reasons). If you then go to Facebook.com, you will see that it ranks #2. It's been like this for a few years now.

      What do you think it would mean to the folks at Facebook to be the #1 site in the world (I think)?

  2. I think it's kind of funny, #1 or #2 are still going to be known worldwide. I don't see the point in running a smear campaign against such a big competitor though. What exactly are they hoping to accomplish? Maybe if there was something else going on in the news between these two I could understand it, but if everything else has been passive (fighting for control of virtual space) then why go aggressive here in a public way?

    1. He's trying to hide the fact that he sells your info. The people who visit this blog know better, but the avg person who posts a new picture of them and friends drinking a beer every other day think FaceBook just exists to exist.

      1. My underage cousins do this shit all the time. It drives me nuts. Like I need to see my 19 year old cousins drunk on FB. Like any prospective employer wouldn't do a search there and see THAT and go, "This half naked 19 year old girl with the Budweiser in her hand might not possess the best judgement. Let's not hire her."

      2. Yep. That's a big reason I do not do social networking. Employers.

        Though I have been queried why I don't participate in LinkedIn. I've also had a prospective and active employer ask me for a Facebook invite since they were unable to find me.

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