SubscribeFacebook’s PR-Gate
December 5, 2007 – 6:16 pm
By: Matt Clark
Much of DigitalBlab’s content is to help PR and Marketing professionals utilize social media sites like
utilize PR and Marketing professionals. I have always been proud of the millenniums. My generation is entrepreneurial, creative, and successful – but we are still young bloods. We still have a lot to learn and need veteran leadership, and Mark Zuckerberg is a perfect example.
I don’t know how you say no to $2 billion from Microsoft. I also don’t know how you don’t have PR. I am always blown away by companies that don’t believe in PR - there are countless examples of how a lack of PR has killed a company and even more examples of how PR has saved a company.
Yesterday, Josh Quittner of Fortune wrote a good article entitled RIP Facebook?:
What’s surprising here is the speed with which this thing is coming undone - and the ease with which it could have been avoided. What’s harming Facebook - perhaps to a terminal degree - is enormously bad PR. For a social media company, these folks don’t understand the first thing about communication; they have alienated the press by being arrogant, aloof and dishonest. Their idea of press relations is sending a stupid message to a What’s New at Facebook Group that directs you to another website for a canned statement.
And it is killing them. That bad press extends from the blogosphere to mainstream media. No one who writes about Facebook likes it anymore. And while that might seem insidery - who cares what the press thinks? - it’s having dire repercussions. For one thing, advertisers care what the press thinks. Bad press is causing advertisers to jump ship. And that’s begetting even more bad press. It’s the opposite of a virtuous circle; it’s an economy being undone.
I wont say they “lied”, but they definitely misspoke about Beacon, as pointed out by Louise Story of the New York Times. Zuckerberg made some bold statements on Madison Avenue, and I agreed with a lot of them, but he said Beacon would be an opt-in program. But it turned out to be an opt-out program. It took until today for them to say sorry.
In March 2006 USA Today posted two negative stories, one about user profiles having too much personal content and another about athletes losing scholarships for utilizing Facebook. As pointed out by POP! PR Jots, their responses were laughable:
- “People are learning how to use the site and what’s OK to share,” says Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. “As time goes on, people will learn what’s appropriate, what’s safe for them - and learn to share accordingly.
- “That would be like banning rock ‘n’ roll in the ’50s,” Facebook director of marketing Melanie Deitch says with a laugh.
They don’t respect the blogosphere, which is really weird because they are part of the social media world. The blogosphere took on DELL and AOL, they made Steve Jobs say sorry and give refunds. Of course the blogosphere will attack Facebook, and I’m not sure Facebook has the PR savvy to handle it properly.
Facebook, however, does do one thing well - their corporate blog. Zuckerberg posts sporadically, but he blogs more than most corporate CEOs do. And today he said sorry:
About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web. We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it. While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I’d like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.
This is a step in the right direction for Facebook. But they need an in-house PR guru or a full agency. They need experts helping them. They can’t afford Edelman, as Facebook only made $30 million last year, but they can get a good firm to handle crisis communications and media relations.
I can’t see bad PR killing Facebook like Fortune said. They have enthusiastic users who will continue to use the site to flirt and keep in touch with old friends. They made $130 million last year, $30 million was profit. They will continue to grow revenue no matter what. I do think that Bad PR will drive people to MySpace and will lower their evaluation. But who knows – YouTube was able to sell out for hundreds of millions in the middle of a lawsuit.