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On May 24, 2010 Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg published an op ed in the Washington Post in which he defended himself and Facebook against the allegations of privacy watchers and Facebook users who feel that Facebook's privacy settings are too vague and leave too much wiggle room.

In blogs, a number of reasons were cited to explain why Facebook chose The Washington Post to publish its statements (the chairman of WaPo is also on the board of directors of Facebook). Less space was devoted to the implicit statement beneath this move.

Facebook has more than 400 million users worldwide. According to online search engine WolframAlpha, facebook.com attracts more than 490 million visits a day. Compare that to the circulation of the Washington Post paper: 623 000 (source: WolframAlpha). The WashingtonPost.com shows a stronger fan base (at 6.7 million visitors daily), but that's still nowhere near 490 million. 

Zuckerberg can reach each and every one of those 400 million users with one mouseclick. Then why does he use a paper ("dead tree medium") to defend himself? It's simple: because print is not dead yet.

You can discuss whether he actually chose the Washington Post because of the fact that it's primarily an 'offline' paper or just because it's a journalistic brand. The fact remains that Zuckerberg clearly assumes that an article (even a glorified letter to the editor) in a respected 'dead tree' news brand still carries more weight than an online instant message, tweet or wall post, even though the number of social media, and even Facebook users exceeds the number of Washington Post readers by an order of magnitude.

Instinctively, I'm inclined to think Zuckerberg is right: PR is not ready to pack up and move to the online realm indefinitely. I still meet policy makers, business people and opinion leaders who have their secretary print all of their e-mails. These movers and shakers read newspapers, but they're not active (yet) on Twitter, Facebook or other networks. For most of them, a newspaper still does carry more weight than any online movement, regardless of size.

Another thing that is evident from his move is that offline PR is still a perfect starting point to generate online PR and buzz. According to the statistics provided at the bottom of the op ed, the article was shared on Facebook some 14 000 times - another 13 000 people even claim to "like" the article on Facebook. It was retweeted more than 2000 times. It's slightly ironic that a lot of Facebook users will learn of the stated opinions of Mr. Zuckerberg through a link to an outside medium.

There was also a lot of criticism leveled at Zuckerbergs core message. 'Pure PR,' some blogger said (when PR is done badly, some people always assume that this must be "pure PR" when in fact it is simply amateuristic PR).

I am personally inclined to believe Zuckerberg when he makes promises like:

• "We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want."
• "We do not give advertisers access to your personal information."
• "We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone."

For the simple reason that to promise these things and not live up to them, would be atrocious PR. Online or offline.

If you like this blog post, you might also like to read: 

•   Using LinkedIn professionally instead of just "being on" LinkedIn:an introduction into the use of LinkedIn for professional services providers. 

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