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Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

techcrunch.com

21–30 of 51 posts

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#21
post #8

Wow. Techcrunch defended journalistic integrity, and i actually believe them. They're right, this is a problem, and it's being highlighted in the correct manner. The other broader issue that has to be dealt with is that this is the face of the new media landscape. Where do you think journalists and writers have left to go in the collapse of the news media? PR flacks often times have journalism degrees, and the only p…

I couldn't help but notice the irony of TC's "Tonight We Dine in Hell" (which you just knew was an MG Siegler post before clicking through) right below the "AOL Hell" link. MG is one of the stars of the "AOL Way" but at least in this case and with the Project Spartan break, he's committed some real and quality journalism.

I was shocked that it was MG was writing it, since I scrolled up to the top about halfway through the article to check out who wrote it. There weren't any rabid apple fanboy comments, and it was somewhat well-written, and usually it's Michael Arrington that writes the anti-PR articles. Maybe he will be more of a journalist in the future, and my unsubscription from techcrunch in my rss reader will have been wrong.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#22

Wow. Techcrunch defended journalistic integrity, and i actually believe them. They're right, this is a problem, and it's being highlighted in the correct manner. The other broader issue that has to be dealt with is that this is the face of the new media landscape. Where do you think journalists and writers have left to go in the collapse of the news media? PR flacks often times have journalism degrees, and the only p…

A journalist arrogates to himself the right to take your confidential code and splatter it on the internet in return for advertising pageviews.

Siegler profits directly from leaks. Do you deny this?

And FB does not profit from leaks.

So this has nothing to do with integrity. What does printing something marked "confidential" have to do with integrity? Siegler is just mad that FB got someone to post their side of the story.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#23
post #19

I actually think MG went really out of his way to look for a controversial reason for Facebook's choice of platform for Project Spartan. And I think he is wrong, this time. Facebook could have gone with a native iOS app, granted that's what most companies do who are specifically trying to target iOS. But is it really necessary to reach for far fetched reasons why they'd want to go with the web app approach instead? I…

You can only have in-app payment inside a native iOS app if the payment goes through the appstore, or Apple rejects the app.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#24
Facebook creating a new mobile app platform? I doubt they are capable of producing of high enough quality software to serve as a platform - their iPhone app is the buggiest app I have ever used on the iPhone (constant crashes, stuck interface elements, mismatch between pictures and their thumbnails), and their web site is likely the buggiest web site (duplicate items in news feed, missing items, the message counter is never correct). Basically, on Facebook nothing ever works right. I don't see a lot of people rushing to discard their iOS apps in favor of that.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#25
post #22

Wow. Techcrunch defended journalistic integrity, and i actually believe them. They're right, this is a problem, and it's being highlighted in the correct manner. The other broader issue that has to be dealt with is that this is the face of the new media landscape. Where do you think journalists and writers have left to go in the collapse of the news media? PR flacks often times have journalism degrees, and the only p…

A journalist arrogates to himself the right to take your confidential code and splatter it on the internet in return for advertising pageviews. Siegler profits directly from leaks. Do you deny this? And FB does not profit from leaks. So this has nothing to do with integrity. What does printing something marked "confidential" have to do with integrity? Siegler is just mad that FB got someone to post their side of the…

When I read this my concern was that journalists like to see things in a narrative of battle and conflict. Even non-war journalists want to be war journalists, so they write about war, even when there is no war. Personally I don't see enough evidence to support Siegler's certainty of an all out attack on Apple by Facebook. He's even more likely to see it this way I guess because of his open bias in favor of all things Apple. (I say, as an Apple fanboy myself.)

On the other hand, some company executives like to see things in a violent narrative too. They're all about crushing the competition and storming the market. So maybe Facebook's leadership sees their relationship with Apple the same way Siegler does. Hard to know.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#26

Hey, HNers, Here's something I would pay money for and maybe other publishers, as well. Through WindyCitizen.com, I get about 40-50 press releases a day trying to get one our writers to cover some event or celebrity appearance in Chicago. This is absurd considering our site is all user-generated content. But we're on lists somewhere and so the PR industrial complex thinks we want to hear about all their fake news. It…

You can already do this with the Canned Responses Gmail labs plugin. Just set up a canned response and then set up a filter.

Just investigated! It's very limited. You can really only do one-line responses. I want to respond with an e-mail with pricing info, a media kit attached etc etc.

Still looking.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#27
I truly do not get it.

PR exists to serve its clients. Control and spread specific messages is the job. I don't think anyone has any illusion about that.

Tech industry and tech journalism is weird. Most of the writers do not investigate or do any leg work for that matter (hauling their asses to WWDC is apparently too much work and too costly, so they demand realtime webcast). The majority of tech blog posts are dressed up PR pieces maybe with some attempt snarkiness and editorialization, the others are scoops(with fuzzy pictures!!!) or reviews or personal opinion/rant.

The gist is this: we do not get truth or plain news anymore (or ever did). The media have their angles and the companies represented by the PR firm have agendas too, but together they produce large amount of purposeful info everyday and millions of clicks. If this symbiotic relationship can be defined as war, then yes and Oceania is at war with Eurasia.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#29
post #21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't help but notice the irony of TC's "Tonight We Dine in Hell" (which you just knew was an MG Siegler post before clicking through) right below the "AOL Hell" link. MG is one of the stars of the "AOL Way" but at least in this case and with the Project Spartan break, he's committed some real and quality journalism.

I was shocked that it was MG was writing it, since I scrolled up to the top about halfway through the article to check out who wrote it. There weren't any rabid apple fanboy comments, and it was somewhat well-written, and usually it's Michael Arrington that writes the anti-PR articles. Maybe he will be more of a journalist in the future, and my unsubscription from techcrunch in my rss reader will have been wrong.

I was also very surprised to discover (after the fact) that this was an MG article. I normally skip his articles; the problem isn't the fanboyism, it's that he writes like he's being paid by the word. They're all three times longer than they should be, and I long ago got tired of straining the soup for a few morsels of real information.

Someone needs to give MG a collection of Hemingway's short stories for Xmas.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can already do this with the Canned Responses Gmail labs plugin. Just set up a canned response and then set up a filter.

Just investigated! It's very limited. You can really only do one-line responses. I want to respond with an e-mail with pricing info, a media kit attached etc etc. Still looking.

So what you want is, in essence, a service which you can set up a filter to direct messages to (possibly safer than letting it interact with your account directly?), which then responds to each email it receives with a message that you previously generated, possibly including attachments.

Gmail's vacation responder does all of that except attachments, but you could use the rich formatting of signatures to include links to your media kits.

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