Facebook Busted in Clumsy Smear on Google

[Barry]

Facebook Busted in Clumsy Smear on Google
\https://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-...hp:mainpromo2#

by Dan Lyons
May 12, 2011 | 12:07am

The social network secretly hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about the search giant, The Daily Beast's Dan Lyons reveals—a caper that is blowing up in their face, and escalating their war.

For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.

The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”

But who was the mysterious unnamed client? While fingers pointed at Apple and Microsoft, The Daily Beast discovered that it's a company nobody suspected—Facebook.

Confronted with evidence, a Facebook spokesman last night confirmed that Facebook hired Burson, citing two reasons: First, because it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; second, and perhaps more important, because Facebook resents Google’s attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.

Like a Cold War spy case made public, the PR fiasco reveals—and ratchets up—the growing rivalry between Google and Facebook. Google, the search giant, views Facebook as a threat, and has been determined to fight back by launching a social-networking system of its own. So far, however, Google has not had much luck, but Facebook nonetheless felt it necessary to return fire—clandestinely.

Here were two guys from one of the biggest PR
agencies in the world, blustering around Silicon Valley
like a pair of Keystone Kops.

At issue in this latest skirmish is a Google tool called Social Circle, which lets people with Gmail accounts see information not only about their friends but also about the friends of their friends, which Google calls “secondary connections.” Burson, in its pitch to journalists, claimed Social Circle was “designed to scrape private data and build deeply personal dossiers on millions of users—in a direct and flagrant violation of [Google's] agreement with the FTC.”

Also from Burson: “The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day—without their permission.”

Chris Soghoian, a blogger Burson offered to help write an op-ed, says Burson was “making a mountain out of molehill,” and that Social Circle isn’t dangerous.

Soghoian asked Burson directly what company was paying the agency to spread this stuff around. Burson wouldn’t say. Miffed, Soghoian published their email exchange online. You can see it here.

The story gained wider attention when USA Today reported that two PR flacks from Burson—former CNBC tech reporter Jim Goldman, and John Mercurio, a former political reporter—had been pushing reporters at USA Today and other outlets to write stories and editorials claiming Google was violating people’s privacy with Social Circle.

USA Today looked into it, but decided the claims were exaggerated—at which point, Goldman ran for cover. “After Goldman’s pitch proved largely untrue, he subsequently declined USA Today’s requests for comments,” the paper reported.

The mess, seemingly worthy of a Nixon reelection campaign, is embarrassing for Facebook, which has struggled at times to brand itself as trustworthy. But even more so for Burson-Marsteller, a huge PR firm that has represented lots of blue-chip corporate clients in its 58-year history. Mark Penn, Burson’s CEO, has been a political consultant for Bill Clinton, and is best known as the chief strategist in HIllary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Yet here were two guys from one of the biggest and best-known PR agencies in the world, blustering around Silicon Valley like a pair of Keystone Kops. Even yesterday, when I asked flat out whether Facebook had been the client behind the campaign, a Burson spokesman refused to confirm it. Then, later, learning that Facebook had come clean, the Burson spokesman wrote back and confirmed it.

As for Facebook, its pious handwringing about user privacy might be a bit of a smokescreen. What really seems to be angering Facebook is that some of the stuff that pops up under “secondary connections” in Google’s Social Circle is content pulled from Facebook.

In other words, just as Google built Google News by taking content created by hundreds of newspapers and repackaging it, so now Google aims to build a social-networking business by using that rich user data that Facebook has gathered.

Facebook claims that Google is violating Facebook’s terms of service when it uses Facebook member data in that way. “We are concerned that Google may be improperly using data they have scraped about Facebook users,” the spokesman says. A Google spokeswoman reached last night said Facebook’s allegation about Google improperly using data was a new one and the company needed time to consider a response.

The clash between Google and Facebook represents one of the biggest battles of the Internet Age. Basically, the companies are vying to see who will grab the lion’s share of online advertising.

Facebook has 600 million members and gathers information on who those people are, who their friends are, and what they like. That data let Facebook sell targeted advertising. It also makes Facebook a huge rival to Google.

Last month, Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page sent out a memo telling everyone at Google that social networking was a top priority for Google—so much so that 25 percent of every Googler’s bonus this year will be based on how well Google does in social.

It’s hard to say whether Google will ever be able to crack Facebook’s grip on social networking. But after this sorry, clumsy episode, Facebook no longer seems so invincible. In fact, they almost seem a little bit afraid.

Dan Lyons is technology editor at Newsweek and the creator of Fake Steve Jobs, the persona behind the notorious tech blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Before joining Newsweek, Lyons spent 10 years at Forbes.

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at [email protected].

[Barry]

Facebook, Foe of Anonymity, Is Forced to Explain a Secret
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/technology/14facebook.html?partner=rss&emc=rs
By MIGUEL HELFT
Published: May 13, 2011

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief, at a town
hall-style meeting with President Obama last month.
In the past, Mr. Zuckerberg has extolled the
virtue of transparency.

Facebook, it seems, doesn’t always practice what it preaches.

For years, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, has extolled the virtue of transparency, and he built Facebook accordingly. The social network requires people to use their real identity in large part because Mr. Zuckerberg says he believes that people behave better — and society will be better — if they cannot cloak their words or actions in anonymity.

“Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity,” Mr. Zuckerberg has said.

Now, Facebook is being taken to task for trying to conceal its own identity as it sought to coax reporters and technology experts to write critical stories about the privacy implications of a search feature, Social Circle, from its rival, Google.

The plan backfired after The Daily Beast revealed late Wednesday that Facebook, whose own privacy practices have long been criticized, was behind the effort. It didn’t help that some of the technology experts who were encouraged to criticize Google dismissed the privacy concerns around Social Circle as misplaced.

“Doing this anonymously is an obvious contradiction of Facebook’s oft-stated values,” said David Kirkpatrick, the author of “The Facebook Effect,” a book about the company. “It feels hypocritical.”

While Facebook issued a sort of mea culpa on Thursday saying that it never intended or authorized a smear campaign against Google, criticism continued to reverberate in Silicon Valley and beyond. TechCrunch, the influential technology blog, demanded a better explanation and called Facebook’s tactics “slimy” and “cowardly.” Another well-read blog, Inside Facebook, called it “a spectacularly failed attempt at undermining the competition.”

Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Land, an industry blog, said, “It has the taint of a smear campaign despite what Facebook is saying.”

Facebook insiders, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, said the company hired the well-known public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to suggest stories about Social Circle to reporters because it did not want the issue to turn into a Facebook versus Google story. Social Circle is an optional feature of Google search that uses publicly available information from social networks to personalize search results.

In a statement issued Thursday, Facebook said: “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. 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.”

Companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere routinely approach reporters and analysts with stories about the so-called misdeeds of their competitors. But journalism and public relations experts criticized Facebook for doing so anonymously and insisting that Burson-Marsteller not reveal its identity.

“It’s just unacceptable,” said Tom Goldstein, a journalism professor and expert in ethics at the University of California, Berkeley. “Journalists should announce who they are and people who deal with journalists should announce who they are and where they are coming from.”

Rosanna M. Fiske, chief executive of the Public Relations Society of America, said it was wrong for Facebook to insist on anonymity and for Burson-Marsteller to agree to it. “In the essence of the public relations code of ethics 101, that’s a no-no,” she said.

The Daily Beast journalist who uncovered Facebook’s role, Dan Lyons, knows a bit about false identities. He masqueraded for years as Fake Steve Jobs, a satirical blogger who frequently savaged reporters, companies and public relations people.

Facebook’s secret campaign also underscores the long shadow that Google casts over the company. While Facebook has roundly beat its rival in social networking, its executives, many of whom hail from Google, have long feared that its rival will use its dominance over Internet search to slowly encroach into Facebook’s territory.

Social Circle appears to do just that. It allows Google users who search for a topic like “restaurant in Chicago” to see among the results items about that topic that were posted by their friends on services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Yelp. It works only for people who have chosen to link their Google accounts to their accounts on those services, and relies on information that those services make publicly available on the Internet.

“I don’t think this feature is particularly problematic,” said Christopher Soghoian, a graduate fellow at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University who was one of the privacy experts contacted by Burson-Marsteller. “If Facebook didn’t want the data to be public, it could stop sharing it or it could use a technical mechanism to stop Google from accessing it.”

When Burson-Marsteller, which had offered to ghostwrite opinion articles and submit them to major newspapers in Mr. Soghoian’s name, declined to say who it was working for, Mr. Soghoian made public his e-mail exchange with the Burson-Marsteller representatives.

Paul Cordasco, a spokesman for Burson-Marsteller, said that the firm made a mistake. “The mistake clearly was not being transparent about the client,” he said in an interview Friday. He added that employees would receive additional training to make them “fully aware of our code of responsibility that emphasizes full transparency.”

Facebook is by no means the first to promote critical stories about a rival anonymously. The practice is common in political circles in Washington and beyond, and it has a long history in Silicon Valley.

In 1998, for instance, when Microsoft was under fire from antitrust regulators, it was embarrassed by revelations that it planned a campaign to plant favorable letters to the editor and opinion pieces in newspapers across the country that were to be presented as testimonials from ordinary people.

Two years later, a firm working for Oracle was reported to have paid janitors to go through the garbage cans of a Microsoft-backed industry group in hopes of finding information that would embarrass its rival.