

Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley - newacc
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/business/05pr.html?ref=technology

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jasonlbaptiste
First, the specifics of the company profiled in the beginning. Someone is
spending at least 5-10k a month on PR for what is a glorified dictionary with
some wiki aspects to it? Utterly ridiculous. PR firms can be a necessary evil
at some point in a startup's life, but this is being wasteful.
<http://www.wordnik.com/words/fail>

Now onto the general theme of the article. It makes our industry look like a
bunch of circle jerking asshats. Basically silly product gets built, silly
product goes to silly bloggers, and spammy retweets/reblogs get made. How is
that building any value besides getting someone to try your service then leave
it? People overdo this launch concept. They get one day of blanketed coverage
and think that they have made themselves into a huge brand that the PR Gods
love. Um, what happens a week later when your traffic dives off?

Get a simple product out there, come to a niche community to get some basic
users to kick the tires, and then just have a final release version. Build a
good product, iterate, build more value, charge, and these amazing things will
happen:

a) People will pay you b) People will talk about you c) Press will talk about
you

Pay all the press, bloggers, or God knows what to tweetlogzinepaper it up, and
with utter shit you'll just have wasted bandwidth and a depressing retention
rate. Like I said, not all PR firms/people are bad, it's just what's
emphasized in this article. We've all busted our ass to make this industry
what it is. Articles like this just belittle that work. </end rant>

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ojbyrne
The pinnacle of success, as far as PR is concerned, is getting your marketing
material into the NY Times, disguised as journalism.

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cdibona
I gotta tell you, I've worked with Donna Sokolsky Burke across at least 2
companies, and she's really very good at what she does.

It's very handy to have someone like her to deal with the many many inquiries
you'll get at a successful startup. PR doesn't necessarily have to be awful,
it can be a huge time saver and in the end someone in your company will be the
interface with the public, and PR folks can be very useful in assisting with
those in that role.

Good PR people are like good QA People. If they are working well, they can be
nearly invisible, and even annoying, but you can really tell when a company
doesn't have either.

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mingyeow
This is a pretty one-sided article. There are 3 parties, and all of them are
CRITICAL, because they FEED OFF each other. 1) Tech blogs, 2) Elite Users, 3)
Everyday Users.

Tech blogs write about stuff if they hear it from their friends. Elite users
mention stuff if sufficient everyday users mention it to them. Everyday users
talk about it if it rocks. More everyday users learn about it if tech blogs
write about it

If it sounds like a cycle, it IS a cycle. Every few startups get all 3, which
is why most launches are pretty terrible.

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MotorMouths
I'm not sure if I should be impressed or depressed by this article.

~~~
petercooper
I don't know about impressed, but I'd say "pleased." It emphasizes the less-
than-secret fact that there are fewer "gatekeepers" now and that serious PR is
within the reach of more businesses than ever before. That's an awesome thing
- never before has PR been so meritocratic.

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timf
Interested in what you mean by 'meritocratic'. Do you mean that these
gatekeeper super-nodes are usually talking about your work strictly because
it's good/cool/useful/exciting? Serious question, that is the only way I could
make sense of it.

I'm having trouble understanding how that would mean serious PR is within the
reach of _more_ businesses than ever? Or just more good/cool/useful/exciting
businesses that deserve it, you are saying?

~~~
petercooper
I think there's more than one story in this article. Beyond the surface
stories, it's demonstrated that PR professionals are no longer obligatory
gatekeepers to the press (this was never strictly the case, but far more so
than now). It even says as much:

 _For publicists, the era of e-mail, blogs and Twitter has the potential to
turn the entire idea of P.R. professionals as gatekeepers on its head._

On page 2 there are several paragraphs emphasizing that self-PR is becoming
popular and is even encouraged:

 _Some business people say that because journalists would rather hear stories
directly from the entrepreneurs who are genuinely excited about their
companies — rather than from publicists’ faking excitement — the role of
publicists becomes less crucial._

That screams a more meritocratic environment to me. Less reliance on old-boys'
networks and more possibilities to do your own PR.

By "meritocratic" I'm not referring to the optimal situation where the best
businesses and ideas get the best coverage; that's impractical. Instead, I
mean that if, as a developer/founder/partner/whatever, you knuckle down and
learn PR for yourself, your success in getting coverage will correlate roughly
to how well you do your PR. Back in the "old days" doing your own PR was
almost unheard of and required having a significant number of contacts - lots
of "old boys networks" and not meritocratic at all.

Pages 3 and 4 are a bit "dirtier" in the processes they expose and the fact
that the publicist clearly leverages her contacts. The thing is, you wouldn't
have even seen this info ten years ago - the guts of PR work were well hidden.
Now almost anyone can replicate this stuff if they really want to and it's not
even that hard.

