Information warfare goes wrong. An interesting case between Facebook and Google in 2011. Briefly, what happened was, Facebook hired Burson-Marstellar, a public relations firm, to pitch anti-Google, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing article, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post. At this point, the client (Facebook) was kept anonymous from the public. The plot backfired Facebook when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when the firm tried to plant the story through USA Today, instead USA Today published an article titled “PR firm’s attack of Gmail privacy”.
After a few research of my own, I found out that Facebook hired Burson because of two reasons: First, it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; Second, Facebook are not happy with Google’s attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.
Social Circle is the reason why this fights begun. Google’s own social networking site, Social Circle, was accused violating people’s privacy (something that Facebook does not like its competitor to do ALSO). 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 various social sites such as Twitter, Linked, Blogger including Facebook.
From my point of view, the unethical work of Burson on hiring people to write stories condemning Google is a great job but what went wrong was, Burson did not have that time to build trust among the people that they think is capable of writing such stories. Disclosing the client was one thing but doing such risky thing, building trust is the most fundamentally aspect to consider. As a practitioner, we can’t deny that our duty is to make sure our company that we work for stay ahead from their competitor. This is exactly what Facebook wanted to do, to stay ahead from its competitors.
This tech firm war on 2011 has been the talk of people in Silicon City. A conclusion of mine would be; this fight is all about how much of that Facebook data leaks out onto Google. Facebook is afraid if Google Social Circles catches on; people will use it (and not Facebook) to make new connections and this where the work of PR comes in.
Written by Aizad Fikri
Facebook-Google feud heats up with PR fiasco http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/facebook-google-feud-heats-up-with-pr-fiasco-1.1061542
From my point of view, if we are in their shoes (Facebook), maybe we will feel the same things, feel like being threatened.
ReplyDeleteYes from other perspective, maybe it is a good competition, I mean between Google Circle and Facebook. But the thing is all the information can be accessed by Google, including all the privacy matters. It is unethical if invading others privacy matters for the sake of their own benefits. It is also believes that "Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns", this may affect Facebook's credibility and may spoil the trust of all FB users towards them. This situation also can be considered as sabotage.
I am agree with Facebook's action, but they need to be extra careful next time, this thing may tarnish their image and as well as Burson-Marstellar too.
Facebook vs Google vs Facebook vs Google vs Facebook vs Google vs Facebook vs Google. Is it ever going to end? What Facebook did was pretty close to a case we also heard of this semester which was about Walmart and their "self praise". Pretty interesting they both are since they both posted sort of fake testimony. But either way, main idea here is ethics I think. In PR, we learn about What's ethical and What's not. Little did we know, PR itself could be unethical too. No? Yeah. Haha.
ReplyDeleteabsolutely agree with anna here. this war is never going to end because Google and Facebook is the current black&white. its the trend and all they want is to beat their competitors. However, they need to know and differentiate between conflict and competition, healthy and unhealthy competition and ethical and unethical action. As a PR practitioner we must always do extra research in everything we do or action taken to ensure we are well prepared for any consequences..
DeleteThank you for posting this Aizad Fikri, this tech firm war is quite an entertaining PR drama to read and discuss about. To begin my comment I would like to say that I am quite surprised with the PR practitioner's action to discuss such private and confidential matter through email. That was kind of a risky move wasn't it ? I agree with Alia's comment in which I would probably feel threatened by Google and also Social Circle, if I were in Facebook's place. From what I read in Aizad's review and the article from the link Aizad gave, it appears to me that Google is trying to manipulate or use other social networking sites including Facebook for its own benefits and that to me , is more unethical as compared to Facebook hiring Burson-Marstellar to pitch anti-Google. But then again, ethics is a subjective matter, it's a matter of what is right and what is wrong. What is right to one person may not be right to the other person.
ReplyDeleteFacebook vs Google, most popular search engine and social networking. Basically its about ethic. In me, Facebook maybe want to care about their public and care about their privacy. I agreed with Fara because ethic is hard to described and people have their owned perspective and thought.
ReplyDeleteTo say what Facebook did is unethical would be an understatement. But in PR point of view, thats just a strategy FB tried to use which then backfired. Not that i support the strategy that they used, but FB's mistake is to straight away approach someone to do something that I can considered controversial but didnt build trust between them first.
ReplyDeleteOne of the cons of the technology is that we over rely on it too much that we overlooked the importance of managing our relationships. In this case, if FB were to use such tactic, they should have try to win the blogger's heart first before actually ask him to do such things. Even if he then declined, he'd probably keep it to himself because he respects the relationship that was build earlier. Hence, despite the emergence of technology, we should never underestimate the importance of managing relationships ( interpersonal communication)