Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley

nytimes.com

19 pointsnewacc14 comments

First, the specifics of the company profiled in the beginning. Someone is spending at least 5-10k a month on PR for what is a glorified dictionary with some wiki aspects to it? Utterly ridiculous. PR firms can be a necessary evil at some point in a startup's life, but this is being wasteful. http://www.wordnik.com/words/fail

Now onto the general theme of the article. It makes our industry look like a bunch of circle jerking asshats. Basically silly product gets built, silly product goes to silly bloggers, and spammy retweets/reblogs get made. How is that building any value besides getting someone to try your service then leave it? People overdo this launch concept. They get one day of blanketed coverage and think that they have made themselves into a huge brand that the PR Gods love. Um, what happens a week later when your traffic dives off?

Get a simple product out there, come to a niche community to get some basic users to kick the tires, and then just have a final release version. Build a good product, iterate, build more value, charge, and these amazing things will happen:

a) People will pay you b) People will talk about you c) Press will talk about you

Pay all the press, bloggers, or God knows what to tweetlogzinepaper it up, and with utter shit you'll just have wasted bandwidth and a depressing retention rate. Like I said, not all PR firms/people are bad, it's just what's emphasized in this article. We've all busted our ass to make this industry what it is. Articles like this just belittle that work. </end rant>

The pinnacle of success, as far as PR is concerned, is getting your marketing material into the NY Times, disguised as journalism.

I gotta tell you, I've worked with Donna Sokolsky Burke across at least 2 companies, and she's really very good at what she does.

It's very handy to have someone like her to deal with the many many inquiries you'll get at a successful startup. PR doesn't necessarily have to be awful, it can be a huge time saver and in the end someone in your company will be the interface with the public, and PR folks can be very useful in assisting with those in that role.

Good PR people are like good QA People. If they are working well, they can be nearly invisible, and even annoying, but you can really tell when a company doesn't have either.

This is a pretty one-sided article. There are 3 parties, and all of them are CRITICAL, because they FEED OFF each other. 1) Tech blogs, 2) Elite Users, 3) Everyday Users.

Tech blogs write about stuff if they hear it from their friends. Elite users mention stuff if sufficient everyday users mention it to them. Everyday users talk about it if it rocks. More everyday users learn about it if tech blogs write about it

If it sounds like a cycle, it IS a cycle. Every few startups get all 3, which is why most launches are pretty terrible.

I'm not sure if I should be impressed or depressed by this article.

Depressed.

I don't know about impressed, but I'd say "pleased." It emphasizes the less-than-secret fact that there are fewer "gatekeepers" now and that serious PR is within the reach of more businesses than ever before. That's an awesome thing - never before has PR been so meritocratic.

I can't even being to guess how you come to this conclusion, and the word "meritocratic" is, quite frankly, offensive.

and the word "meritocratic" is, quite frankly, offensive.

That sort of off-the-hip response leaves nowhere to go with a civil and rational discussion. Bravo.

Actually that's my point. I can't begin to grasp (though I welcome input) how your comment helps. Perhaps I spent too much time in essentially what is an anti-meritocracy that is PR in the valley. Unless of course, by "meritocracy" you mean hot women and open bars.

I think we might have a different benchmark of meritocracy in this situation. I suspect you're thinking along the lines of coverage and interest being based on how good a company and its ideas are?

My idea of PR being more meritocratic than it once was is based on that it's now more easily possible to do your own PR and to get results based on your efforts. The more effort you put into your PR, the better the results. PR being no different to other disciplines (sales, marketing, development) in this case.

I think I'm just more impatient. "More meritocratic" is probably true, but imho, it's a long way from ideal.

Interested in what you mean by 'meritocratic'. Do you mean that these gatekeeper super-nodes are usually talking about your work strictly because it's good/cool/useful/exciting? Serious question, that is the only way I could make sense of it.

I'm having trouble understanding how that would mean serious PR is within the reach of more businesses than ever? Or just more good/cool/useful/exciting businesses that deserve it, you are saying?

I think there's more than one story in this article. Beyond the surface stories, it's demonstrated that PR professionals are no longer obligatory gatekeepers to the press (this was never strictly the case, but far more so than now). It even says as much:

For publicists, the era of e-mail, blogs and Twitter has the potential to turn the entire idea of P.R. professionals as gatekeepers on its head.

On page 2 there are several paragraphs emphasizing that self-PR is becoming popular and is even encouraged:

Some business people say that because journalists would rather hear stories directly from the entrepreneurs who are genuinely excited about their companies — rather than from publicists’ faking excitement — the role of publicists becomes less crucial.

That screams a more meritocratic environment to me. Less reliance on old-boys' networks and more possibilities to do your own PR.

By "meritocratic" I'm not referring to the optimal situation where the best businesses and ideas get the best coverage; that's impractical. Instead, I mean that if, as a developer/founder/partner/whatever, you knuckle down and learn PR for yourself, your success in getting coverage will correlate roughly to how well you do your PR. Back in the "old days" doing your own PR was almost unheard of and required having a significant number of contacts - lots of "old boys networks" and not meritocratic at all.

Pages 3 and 4 are a bit "dirtier" in the processes they expose and the fact that the publicist clearly leverages her contacts. The thing is, you wouldn't have even seen this info ten years ago - the guts of PR work were well hidden. Now almost anyone can replicate this stuff if they really want to and it's not even that hard.

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