Facebook PR firm's Google smear tactics described as 'creepy'

The new thing being passed around the internet is "Google-gate." It refers to a campaign that Facebook supposedly created to smear Google by using one of the biggest PR agencies in the world, Burson-Marsteller, to send out requests for bloggers and perhaps some actual journalists to print disparaging information regarding Google's loose attitude about privacy.

If people think this sort of thing is a new idea or out of the ordinary, they should get a clue. Companies pull these stunts all the time. It's just rare that it becomes a public issue. The difference in this case is that the two PR guys at Burson-Marsteller are actually ex-reporters, new to PR, and obviously less than circumspect.

Generally speaking, something like this would work in a gossipy way. You'd set up a lunch or dinner and you'd surround the reporter with a number of famous people they want to meet. Then you'd drop a few gossipy "bombs" and perhaps ask the reporter why he or she isn't covering this "scandal?" It's very subtle. The meeting may purport to be about one thing, but the real rationale is to deliver these bombs to the targeted reporters.

Then it gets out and the source is not traceable, because there doesn't even appear to be a source. The results are much more effective than this Google-gate mess, which just looks underhanded.

During the OS/2 versus Windows era of desktop computing, Microsoft had some of the best examples of this sort of unsung PR/Marketing when Marty Taucher headed the operation for Microsoft. My all time favorite casual comment from him came one day at some conference or other when I told him that IBM had said something, which I outlined in great detail. Without batting an eye, he said, "They lie!" And that was that.

Some years later, Microsoft did get into an embarrassing situation when Edelman took the reigns of its PR machine and tried to begin some phony-baloney Astro Turf campaign and was caught red-handed. A few more gaffes happened and the company ended up on the bad side of the PR coin and has been marginalized ever since. After its heyday 1980s and 1990s, the PR at Microsoft has been dreadful and the results show in the price of the stock.

As far as the Facebook involvement in this Google situation, I do not blame Facebook. This was a PR botch that I'm sure Facebook had little to do with. Someone from the agency came up with the bright idea to "educate" the public about how crummy a competitor's idea is. So that person tried a stunt instead of doing it head-on with a normal old-fashioned comment from the Facebook CEO or a press conference where the CEO or even a marketing guy publicly says that something stinks.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that most agencies today put too much faith in social media and think it's cool to attempt to manipulate social media.

The results of attempting to manipulate social media becomes Google-gate, and it makes Facebook look like creeps, hanging out in dark alleys, trying to smear the competition because that is the only way they can succeed. Good work!

I've seen this happen all over the place. Almost all the big agencies—all of which I should mention are now controlled by two large conglomerates—have bought into the idea that social media is the yellow brick road to modern publicity.

For one thing, they think that bloggers are easier to manipulate. In this case, for instance, the idea was to convince a blogger to write an op-ed for USA Today. In the olden days, the PR firm would ghost write an op-ed from the CEO, and it was all out in the open about what was going on. There is nothing underhanded about that concept, except the cover-up of the fact that the CEO can't really write.

I mean, any publication in the world would be giddy to print an op-ed with a Mark Zuckerberg byline. They'd be lining up.

This new approach is laughable and will lead to this sort of fiasco over and over.

Facebook Introduce Top 10 games for the World in 2010.

Games for Change is working with journalism and game experts to develop a series of activities that highlight the best work being done in this area. Upcoming events include a panel presentation at the annual Games for Change Festival and a showcase of newsgames at the Festival Expo Night. Games for Change is also planning and an awards ceremony honoring innovation and quality in the field. and noways social networking sites like Facebook are also manufacturing games to develop human bring.

The Top 10 games list are below.

1. Social City:

Social City is a city building simulation game. Create a virtual city and play as its mayor. Players control the growth and design of their metropolitan area. Users can add roadways, homes, factories, restaurants, terrain, and other building structures to create a city worthy of the history books.

2.Hotel City:

If you can tear yourself away from your pet, Hotel City, Playfish's latest game.The new game which is centered around building and designing a hotel, is a delight for someone who enjoys the decorating aspects of Pet Society.

The game's straightforward tutorial will get you started right away. However, I'm including a couple of screenshots here for additional tips. Get a load of these yummy wallpaper patterns! I sure hope Playfish brings them into Pet Society.

3. Birthday cards:

It takes more than balloons, streamers and matching plates to create a birthday party your child will never forget!Often, what makes a child's birthday party a huge hit is a simply prepared game or activity. We've collected our favorite party games and traditional party gamesthat can be played as-is or adapted to match your party theme. If this is your first children's birthday party and you are bit intimidated, don't worry. We also have tips and advice from our party professionals.

4. Bouncing Ball:

In this game there is a grid of balls that are slowly moving down. You need to shoot balls to destroy them by forming groups of 3 or more balls of the same colour. After you have destroyed some balls, the balls that are not attached the the rest of the balls will fall down and be destroyed. Sometimes you may need to shoot the balls to the wall so that they bounce off and destroy other balls. If you cannot destroy all the balls before they reach the bottom of the screen, you lose.

5.Treasure Isle:

In Treasure Island Games you´ll have twenty different handouts that all do essentially the same activity - finding the answer to a hidden trivia question from a “map” of letters

6. Zoo World:

Zoo Kingdom from Facebook game newcomer Blue Fang released an extensive update, earlier today. Five new levels, new animals, new flora, new buildings, new zoo expansion, and lots more. Whew!

All the upgrades are welcome, but the new animals are probably the most exciting addition for players. The new animals are: Bactrian Camel, Emperor Penguin, American Bobcat, Grant’s Caribou, Musk Ox, African Spurred Tortoise, Blue Wildebeest, and Nile Crocodile.

Blue Fang also took the unusual step of posting extensive release notes on what is new and changed, with this release. Normally companies are vague about their additions. Full release notes:

7. Texas HoldEm Poker:

Once you understand the game's basic structure, you can play Texas hold 'em and even some of its variants. Texas Holdem is an easy game to learn, just difficult to master. The "mastering" part is the costly part, requiring study and practice. This website offers lots of articles and tools to get you started on the studying. You can practice all you want for free in online poker rooms.

8.Farmvile:

Zynga has been identified as the most acclaimed and widely utilized game developer in the current era, which has developed a number of games ranging from Mafia Wars to FarmVille.

The game-maker has come up with a new generation of games on Facebook. The website has become an integral part of everyone’s life by now.

Zynga has now come up with a new game called FrontierVille, which is supposed to be the most rigorous venture for the gamer.

The latest game, like the earlier one in the range, will take the player through an excellent gaming platform around a treadmill.

However, critics are of the view that the game doesn’t involve any mental exercise of biomechanical enjoyment. They said that the game is rather menacing and infuriatingly unconcealed in its approach.

9. Frontierville:

Now comes FrontierVille, in many ways Zynga’s most sophisticated project. Like other Zynga games it is brilliantly designed and meticulously executed in its ability to lure you onto a never-ending virtual treadmill. Hardly any electronic code is more purely diverting than a game like FrontierVille.

But I don’t find it meaningful or rewarding. There is no mental stimulation or biomechanical pleasure here. Rather, I find this entire category of games both insidious in their appeal and annoyingly blatant in their attempt to commercialize their users — to turn players into payers.

You see, FrontierVille and its ilk do not feel like games at all. Instead they seem like lucrative business models that are being sold and packaged in the form of a game. There is a big difference. When you talk to most designers of great games they will tell you something along the lines of, “We make the kind of games we would want to play.” That never feels like the case with Zynga games. To me, a game like FrontierVille says, “We make the kind of games we think can best attract and monetize the most number of people with credit cards who don’t mind dropping $10 or $20 once in a while for a virtual tchotchke.”

10.Café World:

As the manager and chef of your own cafe, you have to make sure that you have enough food to feed your hungry customers, balance your stove space for food that takes longer to cook and make sure the place stays clean. With food prep times running from five minutes to two days, managing your time is essential to ensuring new plates for customers to discover, which ultimately pushes your Buzz rating north.

Also, here's a tip: If you cook a plate and place it on your counter to serve, you can cook the same food again without taking additional counter space. So if you already have 10 Bacon Cheeseburgers on the counter, adding a new plate with 13 will just add them together.

Free Facebook Access For Airtel Users For Two Months

NEW DELHI: Leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel has made access to online social networking site Facebook free for its over 130 million subscribers, the company said Monday.

The offer will, however, be available only for two months till Aug 31.

The Facebook site will be available in English, Hindi and five more Indian languages - Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam.

"For the two-month period, the partnership enables Airtel customers to access Facebook’s full mobile site faster and at no data cost from their Airtel mobiles via m.facebook.com," said an Airtel statement.

Customers, accessing mobile Internet for the first time need to SMS ‘FACEBOOK’ to 54321 to take advantage of this offer.

Source:mobigyaan.com