Today was interesting to first hear about Facebook’s smear campaign of Google’s Social Circle via Daniel Pink of all people: “Shockingly, it didn’t end well.” What struck me after reading about it on Wired.com, then in the Guardian, then at the end of the day on the cover of a floor-ridden and battered METRO headlined:  TwoFacedBook.com  – was the innocent thought of how we’ve seen this all before.

Remember Wholefoods?   The quintessential grocer with cult-like status was guilty of an online smear campaign all of which is now long forgotten and sales continue to boom (even at the awkwardly housed High Street Kensington branch).  Recall Jack in the Box?  In the infamous E. coli cases, several children dropped dead from their ‘oh so gourmet’ meat.   This was no fictitious story conjured up for bad publicity – it was vivid and real.  Yet astonishingly today, Jack in the Box is one of the most successful and popular fast food establishments in America.

The notion that the mass public cares about how a company behaves (which of course we should) is negated by our failure to successfully boycott a guilty party (in this case a very large slanderer), or through a very clever Ad agency who can work magic to spin things in a different light.  Indeed it’s no surprise that in today’s celebrity driven culture it is not so relevant what you are famous for, so long as you are.  Cue TV hits like Keeping up with the Kardashian’s, The Simple Life, and Mob Wives.

I mean, what would the world look like without those shows? What would the world be like if you couldn’t like or poke someone? Well i think the media will have their fun and play with this latest Facebook blunder, but indeed the irony will be in Zuckerburg looking at his Google Analytics this week to see that if anything, – there was a huge spike in activity…

*Since writing this post Pokes has all but been removed.
Image courtesy of Mopa.ca