
Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell - parth16
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/17/we-will-fight-in-the-shade/
======
knowtheory
Wow. Techcrunch defended journalistic integrity, and i actually believe them.
They're right, this is a problem, and it's being highlighted in the correct
manner.

The other broader issue that has to be dealt with is that this is the face of
the new media landscape. Where do you think journalists and writers have left
to go in the collapse of the news media? PR flacks often times have journalism
degrees, and the only people left paying for flacks are big corporates and
their pr departments.

~~~
temphn
A journalist arrogates to himself the right to take your confidential code and
splatter it on the internet in return for advertising pageviews.

Siegler profits directly from leaks. Do you deny this?

And FB does not profit from leaks.

So this has nothing to do with integrity. What does printing something marked
"confidential" have to do with integrity? Siegler is just mad that FB got
someone to post their side of the story.

~~~
jamesaguilar
When I read this my concern was that journalists like to see things in a
narrative of battle and conflict. Even non-war journalists want to be war
journalists, so they write about war, even when there is no war. Personally I
don't see enough evidence to support Siegler's certainty of an all out attack
on Apple by Facebook. He's even more likely to see it this way I guess because
of his open bias in favor of all things Apple. (I say, as an Apple fanboy
myself.)

On the other hand, some company executives like to see things in a violent
narrative too. They're all about crushing the competition and storming the
market. So maybe Facebook's leadership sees their relationship with Apple the
same way Siegler does. Hard to know.

~~~
knowtheory
That's fair enough, the narrative frame here is certainly needlessly
hyperbolic. I guess that i've (depressingly) become acclimated to the level of
breathless ranting that TC operates at.

Certainly we can say that there is a tension between native and HTML5 apps,
which is of interest to any dev that's interested in mobile devices. That
Apple's and Facebook's interest do not align here is an interesting story.
Especially with Facebook throwing their weight behind HTML5 apps.

How that relationship is actually handled between Apple and Facebook is indeed
another matter, and also something that would be interesting to know.

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brandnewlow
Hey, HNers,

Here's something I would pay money for and maybe other publishers, as well.

Through WindyCitizen.com, I get about 40-50 press releases a day trying to get
one our writers to cover some event or celebrity appearance in Chicago.

This is absurd considering our site is all user-generated content. But we're
on lists somewhere and so the PR industrial complex thinks we want to hear
about all their fake news. It's really annoying.

I would pay money for a gmail plugin that lets me specify the e-mail addresses
of X PR people, and then responds to their press releases automatically with
an e-mail from me telling them what it will cost them to buy advertising on
our site that promotes the event they're touting.

If they're going to spam me, I would like to be able to spam them.

Most of them will just ignore the e-mails, but they'll get the picture
eventually.

Meanwhile, some of them will convert into advertisers. If I pick up
$1500/month worth of advertising from this tool, I would gladly pay
$30-40/month maybe more for a service that lets me do it.

It could be free for one e-mail address, $29/month for up to 50, and so on and
so on.

This way, the indie bloggers out there who can't sell an ad to save their
lives but who get bombarded with PR pitches in their inbox all day can
automate their sales process a bit AND get the satisfaction of annoying the
crap out of the PR people bugging them.

~~~
rewind
You'd pay $30-$40 per month for a service that generates an extra $1,500 in
revenue per month? I don't think your argument for someone to build this tool
for you is very compelling ;-)

Oh how I long for the good 'ol days when people just paid for value...

~~~
brandnewlow
Well, I'd still have to close the sale, get the ad creative, have a web site
that gets enough traffic to deserve an ad spend of that kind, run the ad,
answer questions from the advertiser as the ad runs, take down how the ad
performs, answer questions from the advertiser about their numbers....

So yeah, the thingie that makes it easier for me to do step zero in this
process is worth about $40/month in that value chain.

------
AllenKids
I truly do not get it.

PR exists to serve its clients. Control and spread specific messages is the
job. I don't think anyone has any illusion about that.

Tech industry and tech journalism is weird. Most of the writers do not
investigate or do any leg work for that matter (hauling their asses to WWDC is
apparently too much work and too costly, so they demand realtime webcast). The
majority of tech blog posts are dressed up PR pieces maybe with some attempt
snarkiness and editorialization, the others are scoops(with fuzzy pictures!!!)
or reviews or personal opinion/rant.

The gist is this: we do not get truth or plain news anymore (or ever did). The
media have their angles and the companies represented by the PR firm have
agendas too, but together they produce large amount of purposeful info
everyday and millions of clicks. If this symbiotic relationship can be defined
as war, then yes and Oceania is at war with Eurasia.

~~~
knowtheory
I mean... that's the same sort of argument that politicians wield to depress
voter turnout, so that only partisans will vote (thereby polarizing political
narratives further).

There are partisans in the world, get over it. We have to deal with their
bullshit, or be overwhelmed with it.

The fact that nobody is giving it to you straight doesn't mean that we don't
have interests that should be served, nor does it mean that we shouldn't speak
up.

"A pox on all houses" is a convenient expression to reach for when frustrated,
but it's not a functioning strategy to live by. I know what my interests are.
I'll take the story, when it's relevant.

~~~
AllenKids
I think you misunderstand me. I absolutely agree that the audience should have
a say and be more proactive in this whole thing. My point is PR firms have no
obligation whatsoever to serve the readers, or to make bloggers' life easier.
They are not representatives of the mass after all. MG's moral high ground and
his holy crusade seems rather odd.

------
tokenadult
This reminds me too much about Henry Kissinger's comment on the Iran-Iraq war
of the 1980s: "Pity they can't both lose." Leaving out the issue of the
particular companies and personalities mentioned here, there seems to be
considerable suspicion that journalism has deep problems, especially when
reporting on the economics or technology base of high-tech companies, and
meanwhile the blurring definition of what "journalism" is seems to make it
easier than ever for public relations personnel to manipulate the story lines
the public reads. Maybe there needs to be some other outcome for this war than
one of the two sides identified in the submitted article winning the war.

------
tjogin
I actually think MG went _really_ out of his way to look for a controversial
reason for Facebook's choice of platform for Project Spartan. And I think he
is wrong, this time.

Facebook could have gone with a native iOS app, granted that's what most
companies do who are specifically trying to target iOS.

But is it really necessary to reach for far fetched reasons why they'd want to
go with the web app approach instead? I mean, Facebook _is_ a web app. Their
developers are _web_ developers, the _vast majority_ of their developers are
hired for their skills and penchant for _web_ development.

As is evident from the regular Facebook.com, they have some pretty great web
developers on board as well, knee deep in javascript, css and stuff like that
every day, I'm sure. Wouldn't it be really practical to just leverage that
expertise for Project Spartan as well, rather than have some other team work
with some other code base for some other platform?

Then of course we have the slew of other good attributes of web development,
to which Facebook are already _accustomed_. Like being able to update the app
several times a day if they so choose, without Apple's adult supervision and
delay.

Do we really need to look any further than that for reasons why Facebook went
with the web as their chosen platform? I don't think so, I think it makes _a
lot of sense_ for Facebook to go with the web app approach. That Project
Spartan uses mobile _Safari_ , not webkit in general, as their target platform
kind of shows that there isn't a hell of a lot of anger towards Apple anyways.

~~~
kalmi10
You can only have in-app payment inside a native iOS app if the payment goes
through the appstore, or Apple rejects the app.

------
angryasian
I think this is a little of the pot calling the kettle black. They are one of
the biggest tech blogs out there, and Michael Arrington is an active investor
in the same companies they cover or lack of cover. Integrity is questionable.

------
cliffchang
It bothers me that TC writers, when called out on their bias, claim to just be
mere "bloggers" who are supposed to be expose their bias so you know where
they're coming from, but now they're claiming to be holy "journalists".

------
DenisM
Facebook creating a new mobile app platform? I doubt they are capable of
producing of high enough quality software to serve as a platform - their
iPhone app is _the_ buggiest app I have ever used on the iPhone (constant
crashes, stuck interface elements, mismatch between pictures and their
thumbnails), and their web site is likely the buggiest web site (duplicate
items in news feed, missing items, the message counter is _never_ correct).
Basically, on Facebook nothing ever works right. I don't see a lot of people
rushing to discard their iOS apps in favor of _that_.

------
floppydisk
In other news today, giant social networking site wishes to own your data and
the applications you might use to create even more of it.

Facebook's PR people have an even harder time of it after their privacy
settings fiasco. More people take what they say with a larger salt pill than
other companies because they have earned a reputation of saying X but doing Y.
Not surprised that the TC article implies they are doing the same here.

------
endlessvoid94
How can you possibly be surprised by a company PR-spinning things that make
them look weak?

~~~
themal
The story is a bit too self-involved, there's no need to write about it. They
should sort these issues in the background and maintain a professional image.

------
nhangen
This felt like a TMZ piece, the only difference being that TMZ recognizes what
they are, while TC tries to play both sides of the fence, depending on what
they need from the post.

I fail to understand why anyone would take TC seriously these days, as there
are much better sources of tech information where you don't have to worry
about journalistic integrity.

I'm not a Facebook fan, but I don't blame them one bit. If MG is complaining
about a broken unwritten rule of PR/Journalism, then he should realize that we
don't care.

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tatsuke95
"Journalist" breaks story containing confidential information about a product
in development. PR team kicks into damage control, trying to dismiss and deny
the leak.

What is the story here? That's the job of PR! Whether journalists buy into the
mess is another matter...

------
junklight
It's not just the tech industry - read Nick Davies Flat Earth News for more on
PR and the massive impact it has on "news".

I wonder if this will become the norm or if there will be a backlash and
people will start to prefer unspun unvarnished truth ?

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bsiemon
It seems like this is a war whose outcome rest solely in the minds of the
readers.

------
bxr
_While I like many of Facebook’s PR team on an individual basis, as a whole,
they are probably the worst in the industry when it comes to manipulation,
double-speak, and all around slimeballishness_

Their PR team are a prefect example, in Zuckerburg's words, of a "lack of
integrity".

------
yuhong
It certainly don't help that Zuckerberg is a sleazy businessman.

------
dave1619
MG has got to be my favorite TechCrunch writer.

------
anon7865
The war over the internet is intensifying. Now, why should you care? Do you
think Google is going to "not be evil" for the rest of eternity? You're
already seeing politicians going down for doing stupid things...the global
elite fears the power of the internet, as well they should.

The internet will know what you are thinking, and it will use that against
you. At some point, a tipping point, those who control the internet will be
able to control the rest of society.

The internet can survive a nuclear war. Whoever controls the internet will
control the future.

