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Dan Lyons

Facebook Hired a PR Firm to Plant Anti-Google Stories in the Media

by Robert Quigley | 9:13 am, May 12th

The competition between Facebook and Google over Silicon Valley talent and Internet mindshare has been fierce for a while now, but this is a low tactic: Reporters at USA Today and The Daily Beast busted Facebook for hiring a PR firm to spread negative stories about Google to the media. Not only is this considered a rather shady move, but it’s usually employed by companies on the ropes, not those in Facebook’s position of relative strength.

Here’s what happened: Earlier this week, USA Today blew the whistle on Burson-Marsteller, a major global PR firm, “stepp[ing] up a whisper campaign to get top-tier media outlets, including USA TODAY, to run news stories and editorials about how an obscure Google Gmail feature —Social Circle— ostensibly tramples the privacy of millions of Americans and violates federal fair trade rules.” It was a mystery who had hired Burson-Marsteller as a hatchetman — some suspected Microsoft, a Google rival in the search engine and mobile spaces — but The Daily Beast’s Dan Lyons followed the breadcrumbs and found that Facebook had done the deed, and he got Facebook to confirm this, once presented with evidence.

Read on...

A Steve Jobs Authorized Biography May Finally Be in the Works

by Robert Quigley | 8:47 am, February 16th

The New York Times reports that an authorized biography of Steve Jobs is currently underway and in its “early planning stages.” According to the report, the biography is to be written by Walter Isaacson, the head of the Aspen Institute and the author of popular biographies of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin.

Apple hasn’t officially confirmed the report, leaving it in the official category of “rumor” for the time being, but 1) it’s the New York Times, and 2) perhaps more importantly, the reporter behind the story is the talented and trustworthy Brad Stone, who broke the news that Fake Steve Jobs was really Forbes editor Dan Lyons.

Lord knows there have been plenty of unauthorized biographies of Jobs — by title, our favorite has got to be the one about “the Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs at Apple Computer,” written in 1987 — but this would be Jobs’ first-ever authorized biography:

Read on...
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