Facebook dirty smear campaign attack on Google backfires
What happens when you have too much money and don’t know what to do with it ? For Facebook, they decided to throw money at a dirty smear campaign attack on Google by hiring PR media firm, Burson-Marsteller. Burson-Marsteller is one of the worlds largest PR media firms with clients such as Accenture, Qualcomm, Sony Electronics, Microsoft, Foxconn and HP to name a few.
Burson-Marsteller tried to get journalists from US media such as USA Today, Politico.com, The Huffington Post, Washington Post and via US tech blogger Christopher Soghoian to run with negative and false stories about Google’s breach of their privacy policy in relation to it’s new Google Tool, Social Circle.
Problem is that Facebook is red faced over the smear campaign as it has backfired with USA Today revealing the news that Facebook hired the PR media firm to plant anti-Google stories. It’s a publicity nightmare for Facebook as well as for Burson-Marsteller as the news spreads throughout the internet.
Facebook has already admitted that they hired Burson-Marsteller but not for a smear campaign but to highlight concerns over Google Social Circle’s consumer privacy policies. If this is true then Burson-Marsteller have some explaining to do otherwise this can get quite messy with Burson-Marsteller trying to clear their name in light of Facebook’s statements.
Burson-Marsteller has confirmed they are no longer working with Facebook.
Seriously, what was Facebook management thinking ? Maybe a full page advertisement in the newspaper would of been better to highlight those privacy concerns ? In any case, this will be interesting news to follow – better than watching reality tv!
