I’ve gotten more press than any entrepreneur could dream of–certainly more than I deserve–and I’ve never had a public relations firm working for me. [source]

Ok, fair enough, and I agree with Jason for the most part. I don’t think that all start ups need PR. What’s pissed me off about Jason’s article is his overall perception of the industry.

You must realize that journalists are constantly getting banged by lazy, clueless PR folks who fire first and don’t understand what the word "aim" even means.

Now, while that can be true, not all of the PR people in the world are lazy or clueless. In fact, painting all of the PR people in the world with that same brush is like a Canadian (yes, that’d be me) saying that all Americans are fat and ignorant.

When I was doing PR full time, I was adamant about doing it right, not being clueless about anything I pitched or the way I pitched it, when I made phone calls, who I pitched, what they covered etc.  Even more important, now as a journalist, I want to be pitched properly. I’ve written about this in the past, and I suspect it won’t be the last time.

So, yes, take a look at Jason’s tips for doing PR for your startup, but make sure that if you’re pitching a reporter, that you’re doing it right! Don’t ask if they got your release. Make sure you know the beat your target is covering and for the love of god, don’t get upset if they say no.

Like I said, I’m sure that I’ll revisit this because, well, I’m still getting shitty pitches, so until that changes, I’ll keep harping on it.

Post from: EveryJoe

Should start ups fire their PR firm?

They draw comparison to the fact that their own site Knol, ranks it’s Buttermilk Pancake recipe higher than that of the domestic queen, Martha Stewart. (Knol also ranks #4 on Yahoo!)

There seemed to be a lot of bluster back and forth from the Times, Jason Calacanis of Mahalo and a co-chief executive officer from Martha Stewart’s OmniMedia.

“If in fact a Google property is taking money away from Google’s partners, that is a real problem,” said Wenda Harris Millard, the co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

The Times quotes Calacanis as saying:

“Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case,” said Jason Calacanis, the chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that relies on editors to create pages on a variety of subjects. “They are competing for talent, for advertisers and for users” with content sites, he said.

Google has always promised it will never compromise the objectivity of its search results and the thought that the search giant is ranking one of its own pages higher than any other is still rattling some folk.

“When you see Knol pages rank high, they are there because they have earned their position,” said Gabriel Stricker, a spokesman for Google.

Knol has been called a potential rival to Wikipedia and other sites whose content spans a wide range of topics, including Mahalo and About.com, a property of The New York Times Company that uses experts called “guides” to write articles on a broad range of topics.

I’m not exactly sure if this is News or not. It’s kind of an opinion piece, kinda, and it’s also a bit of bluster. You know, like when your cat falls off the back of the couch, jumps up an walks away casually, as though saying “I *totally* nailed that landing!”, only this is the NYT saying “we’re so not even worried about this. You know, we’re just pointing out the possible links in case, you know, *you* guys didn’t know.”

Right.

Post from: EveryJoe

The NYT reports, We’re Scared of Google

The ability for me to go in and check any of my profiles from one source is nice though, I still don’t think that this is a complete aggregation solution by any stretch of the imagination. I personally want to be alerted to new information involving my social stream which this doesn’t do. To be honest I don’t know if I can call this an aggregator, there really isn’t any aggregation of data. This is just a simple tool for people that want most of their social networking profiles in one place.

I still dream of a complete social aggregator, one day it will happen, one day.

To add my profile on Mahalo, click here.

Post from: EveryJoe

A Look at Mahalo Social

Mahalo takes a step to social networking profile aggregation (I will probably review it sometime next week)

 Is MySpace about to give external link warnings?

Post from: EveryJoe

Some Interesting Links To Share