Saving face at Facebook
Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Presenter
Facebook relies on our trust – to look after our data and not abuse it, but also to behave in a way that we are happy to be associated with. We may not be shareholders in Facebook, but we are stakeholders – after the privacy controls controversy that trust was initially shaken but largely recovered. The Social Network has some more work to do now. And Google will have to demonstrate that Facebook’s fears about their new service are unfounded. Otherwise we will have to reassess our relationship with these huge organisations who look different and sound different, but aren’t always as open as they’d like us to think.
There may be nothing new about one corporate giant employing spin doctors to attack a rival, but news that Facebook is the latest to attempt the dark arts leaves users with a dilemma.
How to feel about entrusting your most personal data, photographs, video and contacts with a company that turns out to be much like any other huge corporate, and not quite the friendly, new social network you heard about when you joined it?
The fact Facebook’s PR company Burson-Marsteller tried such a hilariously stupid way of undermining Google is no comfort. All it suggests is that if there is a next time they’ll be more clever about it.
The tech blogger Christopher Soghoian, who was approached by the hapless PR hacks, comes out of the episode rather delightfully. After rejecting their offer of help in placing an anti-Google article in the media he has revealed a healthy scepticism about all the big tech giants. His first suspicion was that Microsoft were behind the campaign, perhaps because Burson-Marsteller have been hired by them in the past. His response on Twitter was “I am quite capable of authoring my own anti-Google stuff thank you,”, and after the whole lid was blown off the affair his verdict on Facebook was “this scandal couldn’t have hit a more deserving company”.
Facebook relies on our trust – to look after our data and not abuse it, but also to behave in a way that we are happy to be associated with. We may not be shareholders in Facebook, but we are stakeholders – after the privacy controls controversy that trust was initially shaken but largely recovered.
The Social Network has some more work to do now. And Google, who have stayed silent on the issues raised, will have to demonstrate that Facebook’s fears about their new planned services are unfounded. Otherwise we will have to reassess our relationship with these huge organisations who look different and sound different, but aren’t always as open as they’d like us to think.
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Follow Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Twitter @krishgm.