Facebook smear campaign against Google

Facebook smear campaign against Google creates a PR Crisis for Facebook

 

 

My Mother used to tell me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.  Apparently in the Zuckerberg household, if you don’t have anything nice to say, hire a PR firm to smear your competition for you.  As the Facebook smear campaign against Google is being revealed, Facebook is definitely coming out the loser of this embarrassing battle.

Facebook Smear Campaign Against Google Revealed | How it happened

The Facebook smear campaign against Google started when Facebook apparently approached the PR Firm Burson-Marsteller about planting information regarding Google’s alleged privacy violations to major news organizations, like USA Today, Washington Post, and Huffington Post.  The following was the email sent by Burson-Marsteller to these news organizations:

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.

Instead of making a story out Google, these news organizations were much more interested in who was behind Burson-Marsteller’s efforts to push into light the possibility of Google’s privacy violations.  Upon further investigation, the Facebook smear campaign against Google revealed that Facebook was the culprit.

Facebook Smear Campaign Against Google Revealed| The backlash

Facebook is losing Face on this one.  While many social media publications and sites have chastised Facebook for their actions against Google, I think that the DailyBeast.com’s, Dan Lyons, who helped break the story, had the best analysis about the Facebook smear campaign against Google.  Mr. Lyons had the following strong comments as the Facebook smear campaign against Google is revealed:

But secretly paying a PR firm to pitch bloggers on stories going after Google, even offering to help write those stories and then get them published elsewhere, is not just offensive, dishonest and cowardly. It’s also really, really dumb. I have no idea how the Facebook PR team thought that they’d avoid being caught doing this.

First, it lets the tech world know that Facebook is scared enough of what Google’s up to to pull a stunt like this. Facebook isn’t supposed to be scared, ever, about anything. Supreme confidence in their destiny is the the way they should be acting.

Second, it shows a willingness by Facebook to engage in cowardly behavior in battle. It’s hard to trust them on other things when we know they’ll engage in these types of campaigns.

And third, some of these criticisms of Google are probably valid, but it doesn’t matter any more. The story from now on will only be about how Facebook went about trying to secretly smear Google, and got caught.  http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/12/facebook-loses-much-face-in-secret-smear-on-google/?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk1|62482

Facebook Smear Campaign Against Google Revealed| Facebooks’s response

According to the most recent update posted on Huffington Post, Facebook had the following to say about the Facebook smear campaign against Google:

No ‘smear’ campaign was authorized or intended. Instead, 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—just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose. We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst. The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way.

In the end, Facebook may have a good point and perhaps Google’s actions should be looked into.  But the cowardly attempt with the Facebook smear campaign against Google takes the focus off Google’s actions and puts it squarely on Facebook.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net