On the heels of Google's IO event, The Daily Beast reports Facebook hired PR firm Burson-Marstellar "to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people's privacy." It is also reported Burson offered to help an influential blogger write a negative op-ed article about the search giant.
Everything blew up in Facebook's...um...face when said influential blogger outed Burson publicly and USA Today picked up the story.
For its part, Facebook confirms it hired Burson but claims it did so because it feels Google is doing nefarious things when it comes to privacy and because it isn't happy with Google's use of Facebook's data for its own social networking service.
Approaching bloggers, Burson wrote Google's Social Circle is "designed to scrape private data and build deeply personal dossiers on millions of users--in a direct and flagrant violation of agreement with the FTC."
Check out the rest of the saga here but it really boils down to this; grown adults acting like fickle, vindictive children with no self-esteem who will stoop to playground antics to get their way. And that's not business. That's childish.
Yesterday, KFC delivered lunch to window washers 40 stories above the Chicago River. Strapped to a harness a climber dressed in the Colonel's white suit hand delivered lunch to window washers at Chicago's River Bend building. Obviously the whole thing was a choreographed stunt but still, pretty cool.
This is just funny. Bang on funny. And you'll see what we mean after you view this video for Bedford brewery Wells & Young's Bombardier Ale featuring a character named The Bombardier. There's lots of banging. And bombing. And general frivolity.
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Facebook management system Buddy Media has acquired Spinback, a social commerce and analytics company. The acquisition gives Buddy Media the capability to bring its social media management and metrics outside the world of Facebook to the greater web.
Of the acquisition, Buddy Media Founder and CEO Michael Lazerow said, "Tens of millions of websites have added sharing buttons. Very few of them, however, can actually tell you how many sales were driven by these buttons. With this acquisition, Buddy Media can now answer the question 'what is the ROI of social media?' better than anyone else in the market in a holistic way, both on Facebook and off, and on Twitter and email."
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In yet another sad confirmation the human race has lost its ability to appreciate humor, several cause groups have complained about a Sprint ad which ran several websites and newspapers Tuesday. The ad, which stated Sprint opposition to AT&T's proposed takeover of T-Mobile, features a man in a dress that looks like the one the T-Mobile Babe wears in the T-Mobile campaign.
A man in a dress! Now that's funny! Come on, people! But no. No one has a sense of humor anymore.
On complaint came from REC Networks Founder Michi Etre who is transgender and didn't like the ad. He issued a statement which read, in part, "We are deeply disturbed by an advertisement that was developed and approved in part by organizations including Media Access Project and the Center For Media Justice. While we do not view this as intentional transphobia on the part of MAP or the other organizations or Sprint, who purchased the advertising space, we feel that the depiction is still inappropriate."
Again. A man in a dress. What's next? Louisa May Alcott's Little Woman retitled because it offends midg...uh...little people?
While Cannes Lions is a month away (by the way we will be there in force this year in a soon to be announced partnership of sorts), the Cannes Film Festival began yesterday. And in celebration of the festival's kick off, COED is out with its Festival de Cans. Yes, It's exactly what you think and some of it is NSFW so be forewarned. Otherwise, enjoy.
