Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#41

Post by brandnewlow » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 4:58 AM UTC

Travis wrote: post #35

brandnewlow wrote: post #16

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…

Is the power of this the Gmail integration, or is the power in the list maintenance? Thinking about the MVP, it would be trivial to write a program that would login to a user's specific POP3/IMAP account, scan for messages from specific senders, and auto-respond. But how would you maintain the list of PR flunkies?

Gmail integration would be great because I use Gmail and wouldn't have to use some other app.

So if this were a rails app, there'd be two models. You'd have Message Templates and Senders.

Message Templates would be subject line, body, signature, and any file attachments.

A sender would consist of an e-mail address, a selected message template, and then some sending settings (how long to wait before writing back, for example). There'd be a button for a sender to be "active" or inactive. If a sender is "active" and has a message template associated with it, then when an e-mail comes in, the sender sends back the template tied to it.

Then maybe each sender would have some stats about how its performing, how many times it executed, what the open rate on those e-mails was, if there was a response etc etc.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#42

Post by Travis » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 5:12 AM UTC

brandnewlow wrote: post #41

Travis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the power of this the Gmail integration, or is the power in the list maintenance? Thinking about the MVP, it would be trivial to write a program that would login to a user's specific POP3/IMAP account, scan for messages from specific senders, and auto-respond. But how would you maintain the list of PR flunkies?

Gmail integration would be great because I use Gmail and wouldn't have to use some other app. So if this were a rails app, there'd be two models. You'd have Message Templates and Senders. Message Templates would be subject line, body, signature, and any file attachments. A sender would consist of an e-mail address, a selected message template, and then some sending settings (how long to wait before writing back, for…

I'm thinking of this more as a value add for corporate email, actually. I suppose there are already CRM systems out there that do similar features, but it would be interesting to do it in a more open manner. Via POP3 or something, rather than a proprietary vertical stack (which is what I mostly see at my target companies).

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#43

Post by dfabulich » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 5:13 AM UTC

brandnewlow wrote: post #26

jonursenbach wrote: post #20

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.

Canned Responses will let you write arbitrarily long responses. It won't let you do attachments. (But are those really necessary for a spam response? Just send a link.)

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#44

Post by zacharycohn » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 6:18 AM UTC

brandnewlow wrote: post #32

sorbus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lin…

Sounds like I can't just have it respond to specific e-mail addresses though. I'm telling ya. There's a fun service in there.

You can do that in the filter. Copy/paste your list of email addresses into the "From" field in the filter config, then tell it to send the canned response. You can't attach things with them, but if you upload them you can just hotlink straight to it.

Slightly more elegant than having it forward to a new email account and have that autorespond to things.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#45

Post by qq66 » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 7:15 AM UTC

rewind wrote: post #39

brandnewlow wrote: post #16

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'd pay $30-$40 per month for a service that generates an extra $1,500 in revenue per month? I don't think your argument for someone to build this tool for you is very compelling ;-) Oh how I long for the good 'ol days when people just paid for value...

A good rule of thumb for pricing software is that the software should generate at least 10 times its cost in increased profits.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#46

Post by junklight » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 10:18 AM UTC

It's not just the tech industry - read Nick Davies Flat Earth News for more on PR and the massive impact it has on "news".

I wonder if this will become the norm or if there will be a backlash and people will start to prefer unspun unvarnished truth ?

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#47

Post by knowtheory » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 11:24 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #22

knowtheory wrote: post #3

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…

Really? Do you see any code being published here?

And, furthermore, Facebook does not profit from leaks here. But tech companies, especially FB, are more than happy to use leaks and whisper campaigns to their benefit, as we well know, and as is reiterated in this article.

And even if Techcrunch were to disappear, Facebook and their PR team would still be there, lobbying politicians, and putting out favorable stories about their company.

To that extent, i agree with TechCrunch, that their interests align better with the general public's than Facebook's do. So long as TechCrunch is interested in an accurate portrayal of how these tech companies actually function, and how their interests are, or are not aligned with the other forces they must contend with, that is actual journalism, with public utility.

I loathe TC's stupid gossipy coverage of the bullshit that individual VCs are pulling, or who Arrington has happened to have pissed off today. But what Facebook, Apple and Google are up to is certainly of the public interest, especially as they are the forces which determine a good deal of the landscape for the consumer internet.

That tech companies are brazenly trying to squash information that is tactically inconvenient to them is far more disturbing to me than whatever malfeasance you're ascribing to TechCrunch here.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#48

Post by knowtheory » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 11:28 AM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #25

temphn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thing…

That's fair enough, the narrative frame here is certainly needlessly hyperbolic. I guess that i've (depressingly) become acclimated to the level of breathless ranting that TC operates at.

Certainly we can say that there is a tension between native and HTML5 apps, which is of interest to any dev that's interested in mobile devices. That Apple's and Facebook's interest do not align here is an interesting story. Especially with Facebook throwing their weight behind HTML5 apps.

How that relationship is actually handled between Apple and Facebook is indeed another matter, and also something that would be interesting to know.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#49

Post by knowtheory » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 11:43 AM UTC

AllenKids wrote: post #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 dress…

I mean... that's the same sort of argument that politicians wield to depress voter turnout, so that only partisans will vote (thereby polarizing political narratives further).

There are partisans in the world, get over it. We have to deal with their bullshit, or be overwhelmed with it.

The fact that nobody is giving it to you straight doesn't mean that we don't have interests that should be served, nor does it mean that we shouldn't speak up.

"A pox on all houses" is a convenient expression to reach for when frustrated, but it's not a functioning strategy to live by. I know what my interests are. I'll take the story, when it's relevant.

Re: Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell

#50

Post by AllenKids » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 12:33 PM UTC

knowtheory wrote: post #49

AllenKids wrote: post #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 dress…

I mean... that's the same sort of argument that politicians wield to depress voter turnout, so that only partisans will vote (thereby polarizing political narratives further). There are partisans in the world, get over it. We have to deal with their bullshit, or be overwhelmed with it. The fact that nobody is giving it to you straight doesn't mean that we don't have interests that should be served, nor does it mean t…

I think you misunderstand me. I absolutely agree that the audience should have a say and be more proactive in this whole thing. My point is PR firms have no obligation whatsoever to serve the readers, or to make bloggers' life easier. They are not representatives of the mass after all. MG's moral high ground and his holy crusade seems rather odd.