Computer World sheds some light (read the full story here) on Facebook’s coordinated PR attack against Google, breaking earlier today. Public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, hired to carry out the campaign, only stepped forward once Facebook admitted to any wrong doing.
“Now that Facebook has come forward,” a spokesman for the company stated, “we can confirm that we undertook an assignment for that client.”
Burton-Marseller's claims the campaign consisted of 'public information'
The assignment in question was making Google’s Social Circles look unappealing due to public-data mining. The service took public information from sites like Facebook and integrated it with relevant results. Facebook didn’t like the fact that Google was using FB users’ data, so they hired the firm. After all, a Facebook spokesperson claims, this was publicly available information:
“No ‘smear’ campaign was authorized or intended. Instead, 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—just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose. 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.”
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