Clever PR: Facebook bends a non-story to their favor
A funny story has been circulating in the media the past couple years: Employers asking potential employees for social network passwords.
The formula’s always the same: A lede focused on the human interest angle, typically someone struggling in their job search. And then a few scattered examples of companies implementing the practice.
Then people tweet it, facebook it and blog about it. Hey, it’s an interesting story.
Here’s the real story, though: Every now and then, some upper management idiot gets the terrible idea to ask for Facebook passwords in a job interview.
That’s it. This is not a widespread thing. It’s not trending. It’s not growing. Asking employees for this kind of information is outrageously stupid for a variety of reasons, as any HR person, PR person or lawyer will tell you.
So what do you do if a non-story involving your company just won’t go away? Well, if you’re Facebook, you add to it. You go on the offensive and say you might just sue those companies. Confront the non-issue with empty threats and suddenly you’re the good guy. You’re the hero of the village, warding off all the monsters that lurk deep in the scary woods.
I have this to say to Facebook: Awesome move. Someone threw you into the three-ring circus and you learned how to juggle.
It is also about the gesture though, I can’t imagine Microsoft saying something like this about sharing Windows Live logins. Plus they send a strong signal out to companies, even if it’s a loose threat the message is clear: Don’t do this.
Yup, create a problem and solve it to look like you’re being productive / doing good — that’s what all marketing/advertising does to sell their product.
* You pointed out a pretty important aspect of this story – that Facebook is countering a non-existent (relatively speaking) problem with fighting words to act tough and score a PR win. That’s the same type of reaction that many politicians give to problems, heh. Most businesses would see the legal problems caused by asking for Facebook passwords and would never do this. A few incidents here and there are isolated events, not evidence of a widespread trend.
* Most online privacy issues can be prevented by common sense. Particularly problematic for many people is seeing how they post personal information on social media, neglect to use privacy settings, and are surprised when their personal information is stolen weeks later. While you can be careful about what you post about yourself, you can’t prevent other people from posting about you. Also problematic is how there are sites like http://www.dirtyphonebook.com where people post personal information about each that can’t be removed. With Google making all of this information widely available, being vigilant about seeing what people can find out you is critical to maintaining your online reputation. Facebook can do a bit more to prevent people from accidentally messing up their own lives by encouraging more sensible defaults, but in the end people have to be smart about what they post about themselves online and who they give out their private information to and not to give out there passwords to. People have to take responsibility for their own privacy, but I guess in this world somebody else always has to take care of you.
* I hate to be cruel about this to people, but I think that anybody that gives out their password to an employer or anybody else is an idiot. Maybe I just have a different perspective than somebody who didn’t start using technology from an early age, but it seems like common sense to not give your password away. Am I wrong in thinking this?