Facebook Credits
Facebook Credits came out of beta in January this year. Since it was launched in May 2009 in alpha it was believed that Credits would be used solely by people playing social games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars. Virtual currency would give gamers that added experience when competing with their friends on Facebook. Those thinking that might have missed the whole point about Facebook having it’s own currency and the opportunity that it presents to companies and causes.
Facebook Credits
During the last two years Facebook has been rolling out a series of offerings such as Facebook Connect that have enabled users to log-in to third party sites with their Facebook account. This made the social networking site into an aggregator, allowing users to not just publish, but see what people within their network like online – based on websites that adopted Facebook Connect.
More recently Facebook has been rolling out it’s Questions and Comments applications. The latter has been received plenty of views from the social media community. Techcrunch’s Jon Evans says that Comments epitomizes everything that he hates about Facebook, before adding that because it is so simple he might end up using it. Comments allows Facebook to further plough into third party sites. It is becoming the platform of choice for websites. Why? Well because everyone appears to be on it. In the UK there are now 30 million individual users, 35 million in Indonesia and many million more in the US.
I came back from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and what I learnt is how quickly they started to trade on Facebook. E-commerce is being replaced by f-commerce. Businesses are realising than rather that spending money to get people to spend money on their sites, perhaps they should be investing to get the business of people on Facebook – cross the road to sell to your audience rather than get the audience to cross the road. Sounds simple, yet for many businesses a step too far.
Today you can buy airline tickets, clothes, tickets, just about anything. Business is slowly realising that Facebook is also a site through which you can sell.
Facebook Credits might in the future be another extension that can be implanted onto third party sites. The days though have passed when the cashier used to ask if “sir would be paying by cash or credit?” PayPal is now looking over its shoulders at the over 500 million account mammoth that is bearing down. “Will that be with PayPal or Facebook Credits sir?”
Who knows, perhaps one day we will all pull up a paywall that will charge Facebook Credits, which we can then redeem on other people’s sites. Crazy idea, but you heard it here first!
Burson’s Social Reputation Damaged By Facebook Work
Sunday, May 15th, 2011Global public relations and communications agency Burson-Marsteller was outted last week by a blogger for planting anti-Google stories for Facebook that would smear the reputation of the search giant.
Blogger Chris Soghoian was approached by Director of Burson-Marsteller’s Washington DC Media Practice John Mercurio to see if he would write an op-ed for a top-tier media outlet that from a PR perspective would further raise awareness of privacy issues surrounding Google’s business. Soghoian rebuffed Mercurio and published their email correspondence, which was subsequently picked up by The Daily Beast who confirmed that Burson’s client was the social networking mammoth Facebook.
The assignment raises questions not just about the ethics of PR in promoting one set of views over another, but also our industry’s understanding of the media landscape in which it operates.
Let’s not be naïve, assignments such as the one that Burson accepted does take place. It is part and parcel of what the business world. Briefings, allegations, misinformation are tactics that while they are crude, are part of certain people’s skill-set.
That said, one of the first questions that needs to be asked is that of why did Facebook deide to or even agreed to a campaign to highlight the failings of a competitor? Such campaigns, as we have seen, carry a lot or risk and can leave ones reputation severely damaged. Why didn’t Facebook embark on a communication initiative that would highlight it’s strengths, while ignoring competitors weaknesses. Strategically the answer lies within Facebook and the counsel it received from Burson-Marsteller.
All this said and knowing about the factitious relationship that exists between these two giants, questions have to be asked about the quality of Burson’s work, an agency that I must declare I did work for in 2008.
The content, structure and tone in the brief email correspondence between the two parties that Soghoian released raise a number of key points and questions:
Bearing these points in mind and from reading his email exchange with Soghoian one questions why Burson would have Mercurio work on such a project. Let me highlight the reasons I ask this:
Such work is only successful if there is an element of trust that you can work on. Approaching bloggers in such a cold manner leaves not just an agency such a Burson-Marsteller open to attack, but also the client who rightly so would expect anonymity.
Mercurio is trained as a journalist, with a background in politics. Surely he has experience on how to received leaks and how to protect sources.
From a communications perspective the whole operation leaves one questioning not just the suitability of Burson for such an assignment, but the internal understanding of how views and opinions are shaped in a world that is less media-centric. There will be plenty of internal questions within this prestigious agency given that it isn’t just Facebook’s reputation that’s been damaged.
Tags: agency, blogging, burson marsteller, communications, facebook, google, journalism, leaks, news, pr, privacy, public relations, reputation, security
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