May be someone from the PR world can tell us how common/uncommon this type of "operation" is.
While it's behind the scenes it's hard to say how much it happens, but it doesn't really matter. I mean, the PR firm were trying to spoon feed a writer with information he could use to write a story, if he decides that information is worth writing, and readers decide it's worth reading, then fair enough.
But it's an important story because Facebook have failed to keep secret the fact that they are trying to attack Google, and that will have implications on politics between those two companies. Even if Google already knew that Facebook were doing this kind of stuff (more than likely), Facebook being outed changes how Google can act towards them with a different public reaction.
the big deal isn't that it happens,
it's that they got caught
Thanks,
BM offered a mea culpa today that notes as much:
Now that Facebook has come forward, we can confirm that we undertook an assignment for that client.
The client requested that its name be withheld on the grounds that it was merely asking to bring publicly available information to light and such information could then be independently and easily replicated by any media. Any information brought to media attention raised fair questions, was in the public domain, and was in any event for the media to verify through independent sources.
Whatever the rationale, this was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined. When talking to the media, we need to adhere to strict standards of transparency about clients, and this incident underscores the absolute importance of that principle.
Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/b-m-says-facebook-assign...