Facebook 'denial'
The interplay between Facebook's spinners and the press is especially emblematic in the story that broke yesterday. TechCrunch's source is anonymous, but such is the influence of the tech business blog, and its track record for accurately breaking secrets, that its story has been reported pretty much as fact by the rest of the tech media.
The attack on the original story is much stronger than in the cases above, but is carefully nuanced nonetheless: "The story is not accurate. Facebook is not building a phone. Our approach has always been to make all phones and apps more social, not build a phone.
"Current projects include everything from an HTML5 version of the site to apps on major platforms to full Connect support with SDKs to deeper integrations with some manufacturers. Our view is that almost all experiences would be better if they were social, so integrating deeply into existing platforms and operating systems is a good way to enable this.
"For an example, check out Connect for iPhone and the integration we have with contact syncing through our iPhone app. Another example is the INQ1 phone with Facebook integration (the first so-called "Facebook Phone"). The people mentioned in the story are working on these projects.
"The bottom line is that whenever we work on a deep integration, people want to call it a "Facebook Phone" (even internally) because that's such an attractive soundbite, but our real strategy is to make everything social and not build one phone or integration."
The original story was written by TechCrunch founder and owner Mike Arrington, who has long bemoaned the dark arts of PR professionals. You can read his treatment of the Facebook statement here.
Journalists and PRs have a common aim: getting a message into the public domain, but generally come at it from opposite directions. PRs have a carefully constructed narrative that they would ideally like hacks to reproduce faithfully, but journalists get the most reward and kudos from writing something uniquely insightful, not just rearranging the words of a press release.
But for many hacks there's a balance to be struck. There are a few weapons companies can use to ‘persuade' us not to run with a story that they deem detrimental to their company's agenda. These can be as benign as pleading or the promise to make it worth our while with future exclusives, to more sinister threats to restrict future access to the company or even the inference that it could affect the commercial relationship between them.
Media must, in turn, make a risk/reward judgement on the publication of a story. It must be stressed that any half-decent title will nearly always publish, because that's what we're here for, but these other factors still exist whether we like it or not.
The moral of the story is: don't believe everything you read (unless it's on HEXUS, of course). Some media are very speculative in their stories, but then again, as a well-known tech hack once said: they all come true in the end. Conversely the agenda of PRs is not necessarily to convey the truth, but the version of it that best serves their companies.
It could well end up being the case that iPad sales overtake mobile PCs, that Yahoo ends up selling its stake in Alibaba and that a Facebook-branded phone comes to market. But it's not convenient for the companies concerned for those stories to appear at this time. In the meantime, the vid below shows the direction a Facebook phone might be headed in. Cue: statement from INQ's PRs...
