Inside PR 2.54: When the PR hits the fan

For the second time, Gini, Joe and I are in the same room for as we record Inside PR 2.54 – live before a studio audience… OK, we’re at Counselors Academy’s annual conference for PR agency leaders.

The following post originally appeared on the Inside PR blog.  Disclosure: I’m the conference co-chair for 2011 and chair for 2012.

Joe leads off this week’s discussion with: the Burson-Marsteller / Facebook imbroglio. (more…)

The amplification of stupidity

By now many of you have heard about last week’s f-bomb deriding Detroit drivers in the errant Chrysler tweet. If you haven’t, here’s a good overview of the story from someone who inadvertently became part of it.

Of course, this isn’t the first and won’t be the last time a dumb mistake is amplified on Twitter.  I think we can learn three things from it: (more…)

When a retweet misleads

If you’re a Torontonian and on Twitter, you would know that Mayor David Miller is an active participant; posting comments, photos of events and his general take on life in the city. I heard him speak about his interest in social media at Mesh conference and was impressed by his passion and candour.

You may also know that the Tamil community in Toronto has been staging protests lately to draw attention to the situation in their home country. This weekend a march shut down the Don Valley Parkway.

What do these two situations have in common?

Well, on Sunday it appeared as though the Mayor wrote a politically sensitive tweet that was later retweeted.

In reality the Mayor never posted the tweet-in-question. What happened, according to TV Ontario’s The Agenda blog, was that an individual sent an ‘@’ message to the Mayor. Another person retweeted it, leaving out the original sender’s name but leaving in the impression that the Mayor had, in fact, commented. The full story is unfortunate on a number of ethical levels.

For PR people, this is yet another example of a situation we need to be aware of and monitor. And as communicators we need to make sure we don’t rely on the results of a single search, but dig deeply enough to piece together a full story before we offer clients our counsel.

Thanks to my friend Keith McDonald for sharing the TVO blog post with me.

Facebook listens

After the brouhaha that erupted over the change in Facebook’s terms of reference (TOS), founder Mark Zuckerberg has reverted to the old terms for the time being while the organization works to develop its new TOS.

And this time, they created a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities group, with five clear principles (including an apology for any misunderstanding). They are encouraging users to provide their ideas and feedback as they set out to develop a new version.

As a communications advisor, I’d say they did all the right things quickly and effectively to help restore people’s confidence and their credibility.

They:
- Listened
- Accepted responsibility
- Reached out to their users
- Communicated their principles and commitment
- Apologized

And I applaud them for that.

Everything that's mine is Facebook's

Facebook has altered its terms of service and the wording indicates that it will now own all of the content people post – in perpetuity. The change has generated a lot of disgruntled comments on Twitter and in the blogosphere here and here. And it’s easy to understand why.

I’m not a big Facebook user but I think that signing away all rights to your ‘friends’, photos, ideas, thoughts and intellectual property is probably not a smart idea. That said, I won’t be cancelling my account anytime soon and I’m sure many people will feel the same.

After all, Facebook is a wonderful platform to connect with people, chat with them, share moments of your life.

Mark Zuckerberg defends his position on the Facebook blog. Trust us, he says. We’re good people. And I have no reason to believe otherwise, except for the fact that as a CEO he needs to protect his company’s rights.

But, as individuals, we have our rights to think about, too.

I wonder about the ramifications for businesses and organizations with FB groups which have their own sets of copyright and intellectual property rules (not to mention lawyers) to contend with. That should make for a good long legal debate.

I can’t begin to speculate on the answer.

But it seems to me there’s a difference between sharing and a giveaway. And, however, mundane, I don’t want my life’s minutiae assigned to someone else (that sounds a bit like an Albert Brooks comedy plot).

To me, this IP grab is like visiting a store and having the retailer ask you to hand over all your personal belongings when you leave.

It will be interesting to watch how Facebook deals with the fallout, what the outcome will be and how it will affect all of us in the long run.