Phone hacking reverberations - rising media wariness

It's only personal, anecdotal evidence - nothing scientific here - but over the past two or three months, we at Hatch have noticed a marked difference in the level of wariness people have in dealing with the media. I'm wondering if other PRs are noticing this, too. Furthermore, I'm wondering if this is an immediate effect of the phone hacking scandal - the extent to which has only been exposed in the same time period - and has emerged as one of the most egregious attacks on privacy the media has conducted in nearly a decade. Of course, it was only one publication committing offense, hardly the whole sector - a publication that, sadly, people are still buying - but the effect seems to have reverberated across journalism as a whole. (But the question obviously still lingers, was it really just the News of the World, or is this typical everyday practice at the tabloids?)

It used to be that people in the tech sector (where Hatch mainly does business) were chomping at the bit to talk to me about what their technology was, what it did, whom it did it for, etc. In 2011, people are extremely quick to jump to the default "none of this can go to the press, by the way," line, glancing at me nervously as if I'm going to email my notes of the conversation to the BBC or the Financial Times the minute he or she turns her back. (And as if these world-class publications had been holding their front page for said notes.) They then drop their tone to a whisper and start giving me yes or no answers to innocuous questions such as, 'how long have you been using the technology?'

Obviously, I'm used to some level of wariness, and believe all media spokespeople should have an amount of it, particularly when dealing with the UK press. But lately it seems like a deep-seeded fear that innermost secrets will be exposed, jobs will be lost, and all hell will break loose if a PR goes anywhere near valuable information.

We're interested if other media professionals have noticed this increasing wariness, and whether you have other explanations for it. Further, what impact will this have on our industry, when we are paid to talk about stuff, and no one wants to talk?

Letter to Facebook: have you lost your mind?

Dear Facebook,

I used to be a big fan, but my love affair is waning very fast. I sheepishly admit that in the early days, I may have even called you 'FaceHook' on occasion. But now, things have changed fast, and I worry you've lost your mind. And here's why:

1. You aren't Twitter. Some say you are trying to Tweet-ify your homepage and jump on the microblogging bandwagon. Note: that's what your newsfeed, which you've unceremoniously killed, used to achieve. This new mishmash of updates/wall conversations/posts is ugly and disorganised. I long for the old newsfeed.

2. There is already a Twitter, and it's doing just fine thanks, given its growth statistics.

3. You used to be an experience site where one could store little pieces of life and show them around to ones' friends. Now, I can't even find pictures, groups, others' profiles or the other little things that made my experience better. Now, you just seem to be a weird cross between an RSS reader, microblogging and mess.

4. "New Facebook" amplifies your worst feature - the one your biggest fans hate - applications that do nonsense things like vampire fighting that annoy and take up space on one's computer.

And here's why I fear losing your mind could result in your death:

1. I no longer recommend that people in my mom & dad's generation will 'get you' and benefit from joining. My mom would have been just about OK on the old Facebook, but the new one? She won't be able to make heads or tails of it. She shops online, so I believe her computer skills are average or above average for the 60-70 years segment. Wasn't that your biggest growth segment previously? You've screwed that one up royally.

2. I will no longer put my pictures on your site and chose Flikr from now on. Once people stop posting their photo albums, you're not even living up to your name "Facebook" anymore.

3. Your users revolted about the new T&C's to the point where you had to retract them. You planted the seed of doubt in users' minds that you are about to infringe on their rights and privacy (bringing me to my next point....)

4. You have apparently been emailing people's non-member friends that they recommend they join. (This happened to me, despite me a. not saying that was OK with me and b. not even wanting the recommendation passed on.) If you carry on infringing on people's online rights, your users will desert you faster than Friendster.

Please, Mark Zuckerberg, I implore you to rethink this strategy. It ain't working, and 94% of your userbase agrees, from the recent vote. If you wanted to create a new service, you should have kept the happy Facebook bubble, named the new thing something else and given users the choice to upgrade, have both, or stay happily where they were.

Sincerely,
Emily