Should Mark Zuckerberg Apologize?

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I've been meaning to pen a follow-up to my post from a week ago on Facebook's advertising strategy, but the company's now infamous IPO quickly suffocated any opening for a fresh take from a PR (and personal) POV. Yes, readers, I too believed Mark, Sheryl and the bubblicious hyperbole that streamed from the tech, media and marketing pundits I've blindly chosen to follow on Twitter.

PandoDaily's Sarah Lacy

As PandoDaily's Sarah Lacy observed in the aftermath of the debacle:

"That said: These are smart people. They knew the stakes. They planned this for years. How on earth could it have gone this badly?"

I am now the un-proud owner of a couple hundred shares of $FB at $34/per and frankly, I am stewing. I took to my Facebook wall to vent:

Of course I could count on my always loquacious pal Andrew Giangola to chime in with a reasonable retort to my request that Facebook’s soon-to-be Quixotic founder Mark Zuckerberg serve up an apology to the millions of small investors who bought into Aaron Sorkin’s celluloid depiction of him and his audacious creation. (Also, didn't Mr. Zuckerberg publicly state that he wanted to allow individual investors to have a stake?)

Andrew noted that "The Right thing = Liability" and the newly public company's lawyers likely had the founder's hands tied. I decided to let the post die until today when the stock slipped another 10% to $29/share, and USA Today sought ProfNet's help in seeking...

"...someone to write a 350-word opposing view for USA Today that the Facebook IPO is the latest example of small investors getting screwed because insiders had better information. It will run with our editorial saying that the larger lesson is that small investors should stay out of IPOs."

I'm depressed.

I still believe that lawyers or no lawyers, the public consensus was pretty consensual: individual investors (i.e., active Facebook users) who chose to believe in the gospel of Facebook got burned, and for this, the company would be well-served to publicly address this unfortunate reality.  Should it apologize for its CFO's indelicate indiscretion to the underwriting banks? No.  Should it apologize for Nasdaq's meltdown? Hardly.

Mr. & Mrs. Zuckerberg at the Sistine Chapel

But when Mr. Zuckerberg emerges from his Roman honeymoon mode, he should task his PR consiglieres to work with his lawyers to hammer out some heartfelt language that seeks to temper the anger felt by his most important constituency, let alone the inevitable class action lawsuit. The company's silence over this unfortunate chapter in its once-promising young history is deafening, IMHO.

Or maybe not, especially when one considers how the incessant media hose turns all page one memes into ephemeral mush over time.  Here's the latest take from Ms. Lacy:

"Right about now the communications team at Facebook is just praying for someone else in technology to be bought, go public or generally screw up. Anybody. We’re in week two of the post-mortem over Facebook’s IPO. The narrative has shifted (somewhat) from “WHAT A TRAINWRECK!” to “Wait, Facebook made a pile of money without inflating a bubble…is that really so bad?”

I'm still depressed.

Media's Future & Cupcakes

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On Friday, the last day of Internet Week/NY, I finally extricated myself from client obligations and set off to check out two happenings near one another in the city: the TechMunch Food Bloggers Conference and I Want Media's "Future of Media" panel of players and pundits waxing poetic on, well, the future of media.

Stephens, Cupcake Queen

If food's your thing, the day-long TechMunch drew a who's who of the city's food blogging community. Ironically, I was invited by Erik Deutsch, a PR pal from SoCal, though I soon recognized some familiar folks, including two of my favorite cupcake bloggers Nichelle Stephens and Allison Robicelli. Panels, cooking demos, content, eating...you get the gastronomic gist.

I Want Media's "Future of Media" Panel

My visit was short, which was good given the waste-expanding consumables that were in abundance. (Summer is upon us.)

I walked around the corner to the TV studio of NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute where an overflow crowd had a chance to watch media news aggregator I Want Media's Patrick Phillips take a group of seven thought leaders through their paces. The talk centered around:

• The Facebook IPO about which all were exuberantly bullish, in spite of the lukewarm reception the company received from the financial markets
• The fate of The New York Times for which The Daily's Greg Clayman cited a recent report that The Times's  digital subscriber base would eventually replace lost ad revenue from the print publication, while BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti opined that we'll soon look back and question the morality of reading a newspaper given its negative environmental footprint.  
• The explosion of commercially produced and socially syndicated content, i.e., "owned" media.
• The use of real-time reader data to enhance a site's stickiness (and editorial choices).  

I personally would have liked to have heard a few other media trends including:

• The rise of Aereo, a service that delivers HD broadcast TV to one's tablet, and in so doing bypasses the cable co's (and the broadcast networks that sustain them)
• The growth in socially driven news aggregators like News.me, and other innovative ways to incorporate multimedia in presenting news and information packages such as The Atavist. 
• The continued diminishment of broadcast TV audiences from changes in viewing habits. 
• Time-shifted TV viewing and the social TV/second screen revolution 

But there's only so much ground one can cover with seven speakers and 60 minutes of time. To his credit, Patrick ended the session by asking everyone to "make a bold prediction about the future of media." Here were their responses::

Cooper

Jim Cooper, executive editor, Adweek:


"My ten-year-old daughter will spend more time with Instagram than she will with Disney and Nickelodeon combined...it's interactive. It goes with her on her iTouch. She's very swipey...and she's going to grow up in that world where the new metric is not a click...it's a swipe." 

Wolf

Michael J. Wolf, founder/managing director, Activate: 


"Today social gaming is a huge phenomenon. A lot of it is driven by the sale of social goods. As we move into a world where online gambling is legal, I think that the nature of social gaming is going to explode because once people can win real cash versus virtual goods, I think we're going to see a tremendous interest in how games get played socially." .  

Coen

Jessica Coen, editor-in-chief, Jezebel:

"This is pretty basic but I would bet my entire income on the fact that five years from now tablets will be the number one way people are reading media. ...once content becomes better and better on the tablet and tablets become more and more accessible to the general public, people are just going to start using that exclusively."

De Rosa

Anthony De Rosa, social media editor, Reuters

"I think Instagram will become much more pivotal to Facebook's future than it currently is. And I think that the fact that Mark Zuckerberg realized that it was such a threat is kind of indicative of how important that company is. I think in the future Instagram is going to grow and grow and tere's going to be a little bit of friction over whether Facebook will change that product or if they'll let it be. If they're smart they'' just let it be." 

Lerer

Ben Lerer, Co-founder/CEO, Thrillist:

"I don't know.... I actually think the mobile thing is the biggest movement that we're seeing.  More and more popular sites...you're going to see the percentage of traffic coming by mobile growing in an insane way...everybody should be building mobile first for sort of everything at this point."

Clayman

Gregory Clayman, publisher, The Daily:

Foursquare becomes absolutely ridiculously huge...the couponing business blows up...they make gobs of money...and Facebook buys them for an outrageous sum...I think their product has gotten better and better and better..." 

Peretti

Jonah Peretti, Co-founder, Buzzfeed:


I think on a five year horizon you can see that both social and mobile are going to increasingly start to eat in to existing industries and change the status quo...how things are done now. You'll see social publishing become bigger and bigger...social advertising become bigger and bigger. Social will happen on mobile devices.  We're sort of at a beginning of a shift...you can extrapolate. 
   


You can watch the one-hour session here:

 

Facebook Advertising: To Like or Not to Like

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As the Facebook IPO frenzy crescendos, the media pendulum has swung from fawning friendliness to sudden skepticism catalyzed by one giant automaker's decision to pull its $10 million ad budget from the 900-million+ strong social network.

Interestingly, and mildly reminiscent of its defiant public posture during the government bailouts of its rivals, Ford Motor Company promptly countered by expressing confidence in its own social marketing endeavors on Facebook.

The company's social media chief Scott Monty, a friend and one of the best in the biz, used his own Twitter pulpit - with its 75k+ followers -- to carefully reinforce Ford's support for Facebook, i.e., he didn't stray too far from the company's prepared statement.

USA Today noted:

"But Scott Monty, social media leader at Ford -- which to his credit has more than 1.5 million likes on its main Facebook page to GM's more than 378,000 -- is actively promoting Ford's commitment to Facebook through his Twitter account (@ScottMonty). He tweeted that Ford believes Facebook ads are effective as part of a general strategy, but not as a "straight media buy."

Scott even tweeted a Ford/Facebook-friendly video link  to influential industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang of Altmeter Group (and his 104,000 followers).

Be that as it may, the whole kerfuffle on the eve of Facebook's initial public stock offering set media tongues-a-waggin', including this prominent piece in The New York Times Dealbook titled "Ahead of Facebook I.P.O., a Skeptical Madison Ave:"

"Despite the overwhelming level of interest, Facebook is facing fresh concerns over its ability to attract enough advertising revenue to justify that stratospheric valuation."

Facebook actually has itself to blame for the skepticism in the marketing marketplace. In February, the company's top executives, minus its famous founder/CEO, travelled to New York for a conference it dubbed fMC. Anybody who was anybody on the creative and buy sides of Madison Avenue attended this live-streamed event wherein Facebook laid out its vision for helping marketers market and in so doing, articulate its "ad"-driven revenue-generating business model. It was summed up by one of the company's senior marketing executives thusly:

"We are in a revolution from ads to stories."

Nearly all who left that conference had drunk the Kool-Aid. Facebook unilaterally declared its intention to dispatch with traditional digital advertising and replace it with "stories" as the primary means for engaging customers. It promised companies that have invested in the construct of elaborate Facebook pages and timelines to amplify the positive fan-generated messages (i.e., stories) to a much wider audience -- for an upcharge. The wider the amplification, the greater the fee.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (Photo: Peter Himler)

At the time, attendees were so smitten with this vision of consumer-generated stories driving home the marketing message, let alone seeing and hearing from the always inspiring Sheryl Sandberg, they neglected to consider the practical shortcomings.

First, agencies are simply not (yet) organized to capitalize on Facebook's envisioned paradigm. The creation of original content, e.g., FB pages and timelines, has typically resided in the domain of the PR professional, while ad creative and paid placement, sat squarely in the realm of the ad and media buying agency. While there has been much conjecture about these distinct silos breaking down, for most agencies it simply hasn't happened yet.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, a Facebook ad or story is an entirely different animal than let's say a Google-delivered search ad that pops based on the recipient's stated intent. If I'm searching for a digital camera, Google knows and will serve up relevant ads now, or six weeks from now via re-targeting. If I'm a Canon marketing rep, how can I leverage Facebook's voluminous amount of personal data to pinpoint and engage a pre-qualified buyer? I probably can't. However, if I'm repping an estrogen-replacement therapy, finding and engaging women over a certain age on Facebook is likely much more do-able.

From The Times piece:

WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell

"It’s one of the most powerful branding mechanisms in the world, but it’s not an advertising mechanism," said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, the giant advertising agency.

(Who knew that WPP was an advertising "agency?")

But Sir Martin, my old boss, is essentially correct. Facebook's value to marketers lies in its ability to reinforce brands -- through fans' stories or otherwise -- and less in its ability to spur (trans)actions from a user who has shared a desire to purchase a specific product or service.

Still, with its 900 million+ users globally, and the data it has collected on each of them, marketers would be remiss in not "liking" what Facebook has to offer. I have one client in the ad tech space who created a birthday greeting ad for his wife and delivered it to her Facebook page, and only her Facebook page, based alone on the targeting data FB made available to him.

"It [the move by GM] will make people rethink how well their investments are working on Facebook but I can’t see a bunch of people following suit,” said Peter Kim, chief strategy officer of Dachis Group, a big-data marketing group."

Here's a clip I caught this morning featuring the New Yorker's always astute chronicler of all things media Ken Auletta waxing on the subject. Video link here.

I Want My Aereo TV

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New York Tech Meetup

Client obligations and travel took me away from the last couple of New York Tech meetups, so I was glad to be back at NYU Skirball Center to witness first-hand what the city's hot hot hot tech startup scene had up its collective sleeve. I wasn't disappointed.

As we settled into our seats, I had a chance to chat with Kelly who was seated next to me and attending her first NYTM. She told me she worked at Moveline, a startup, but I thought she said Movieline and then Moodline, both of which sounded par for the NYTM course. She actually worked for Moveline, a site that "...makes it easy for people who are preparing for a long-distance move to quickly gather the information they need to save money and make smart moving decisions." Perhaps we'll see Kelly and her moving industry-disruptive colleagues on this stage before too long.

Fol.io Showcased

The evening's fare ranged from more established startups like Disqus, an evolved website commenting platform, to Square Inc., the Jack Dorsey-founded, mobile payment system that has transacted $4 billion in just two years of existence.

We also saw the 24-hour hackathon creations Audigram, the music playlist discovery site germinated at my #3 son's university, and Sensible Text, a "psychic text editor" that auto-fills your sentences using prose from pre-selected sources, e.g., Google Search or "Pride & Prejudice."

Attendees also had a chance to hear from the founders of Folio, which makes it easy for graphic designers or anyone in the content creation business to monetize their own digital content.

Plum Perfect's Asmau Ahmed

And what would the New York Tech Meetup be without the obligatory site that helps consumers enhance their personal style. In this instant, we were treated to Plum Perfect, which allows users (of the female variety) to upload their headshots and then use the site's sophisticated color technology to take the guesswork out of finding just the right beauty products. It does for beauty (and fashion and home decor) what Kayak does for travel. Right?

Having personally stood on the stage of the New York Tech Meetup to showcase a new media search engine for PR professionals, I took special interest in a startup from "the first father and son team to co-present at NYTM."

Launch.it: "Dad, don't hog the mike." 

Brian Cohen, a tech PR pioneer who founded the firm Technology Solutions and was one of Pinterest's earliest investors, and his son Trace, a
PR pro and NY tech entreprener, used the meetup to Launch.it, I mean to debut their socially driven, self-publishing platform for PR pros called Launch.it.

The platform takes the owned media model a step further by allowing PR peeps to craft, post and socialize original stories about their clients' new product and services, thus bypassing the media filter for direct customer engagement.  I'll be keeping an eye on this.

Finally, and clearly the crowd favorite, we were treated to a demo of Aereo TV by its CEO Chet Kanojia. If you've been living in a cave on Fiji these last few months,  you've likely missed the uproar this little Brooklyn-based TV startup, buoyed by IAC's Barry Diller, has created for broadcasters, MSOs and those in DC who regulate such things.

Aereo's Antenna (actual relative size)

In a nutshell, Aereo has developed a tiny antenna and cloud-based, back-end technology that allows anyone (in New York City, for now) to receive live or time-shifted high-definition broadcast TV (only) programming on their mobile devices.  As a result of its ingenuity, Aereo has thrown the broadcast industry into a tither prompting a copyright lawsuit and a new injunction to stop the service.

Aereo's Chet Kanojia makes the case

Aereo made a most astute PR decision to showcase its service before this particular crowd, which has little sympathy for the cable companies, and by extension, the entrenched broadcast industry. Aereo was thus roundly embraced, especially after Chet explained that broadcasters' FCC license requires them to freely serve the public good. On its website, Aereo asserts

"Consumers are legally entitled to access broadcast television via an antenna and they are entitled to record television content for their personal use."

Video of the evening's presenters can be found here.

Startup Sustainability

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Startups to Watch (via The New York Times)

Anyone with a stake in a technology (or any other) startup will certainly appreciate the challenge entailed in prolonging editorial interest in their fledgling investment. Once the initial flurry of hyper-activity in the news and social spheres evaporates, how can a founder (and his PR consiglieres) build "legs" to ensure long-term success?

Arrington, now a VC

In the beginning, it's a no-brainer to tap the startup's connected VC to trumpet the company's name and narrative to his or her friends, fans and followers. Then there's the exclusive dib a PR firm might call in to one of the TechMeme-destined social media or tech news sites.

But a couple months have now passed and the conversation has moved on to some other shiny new object and the site's growth has flat-lined.  The cool kids took a taste, but the masses have not followed their lead. That effusive "launch" media coverage in TechCrunch, Mashable, TheNextWeb and/or GigaOm may have elevated egos, but their resonance was short-lived in today's fragmented, self-selecting and ephemeral media world.

In a recent Inc. Magazine profile titled "Turntable.fm: Where Did Our Love Go?" about the once high-flying DJ-wannabe driven startup (that this blogger personally adored until it became a total time-sync), Burt Helm wrote:

"The whimsical site they released, where users posed as cats and bears and spacemen playing songs together in a chat room that resembled a rock club, attracted more than 360,000 users in three months, then $7 million in funding at a $37 million valuation. Even celebrities backed it: Jimmy Fallon, Ashton Kutcher, and both Lady Gaga's and Madonna's managers invested. Turntable "has upended how I listen to music," blogged New York Times editor Sam Grobart in a post titled "Spotify is great, but Turntable.fm is Amazing."

Then traffic started falling. By autumn, it dwindled to less than half its peak, and the very same tech watchers started wondering whether it was all over. Goldstein says he can hear the doubt in the voices of his Silicon Valley friends. "I can tell now when people say, 'How's it going?' they mean, 'You're flattening, aren't you?' "

Highlight may be an even bigger poster child for a startup whose initial hype came and went, and now finds itself struggling to keep its media mojo. I touched on its coming out party here, but Digital Trends' Molly McHugh reported more recently on the whole SoLoMo category in a piece titled "Hyperconnected Hangover:"

"Unfortunately, all the SXSW buzz may have come too early. Since the show, these apps have been quiet to incredibly quiet for me. Sure, Portland, Oregon isn’t New York — but it isn’t the midwest either. Yet the last time I got a notification from any of these apps was weeks ago.

When I spoke with Highlight creator Paul Davison at SXSW, he conceded that while he was happy with all the enthusiasm for his app, he was also worried the setting was going to create a false sense of ubiquity — and that when we all went back home and weren’t able to browse our neighbors and wonder at all the things we had in common (and come on, Interactive week is full of us nerds) it would be disappointing.

And it kind of has been. And the next big update for any of these apps is still on the horizon. So it’s easy to get a little… uneasy about their future"

Business Insider's left coaster Matt Rosoff piled on with this Q&A with Highlight CEO titled "What It's Like Being The Over-Hyped Talk Of Silicon Valley" in which he asked:

"What's it like becoming the talk of the town and then experiencing a crazy about-face? How do you survive the hype bubble?"

Meanwhile, Highlight's primary competitor in the SoLoMo category, Glancee, which didn't receive nearly half the media attention at SXSW as its rival, was gobbled up by Mr. Zuckerberg and company over the weekend.

Nowadays, there exists no PR panacea that will anoint and sustain a startup for the long term.  In fact, too much initial coverage at the outset may actually work against a company in its efforts to maintain visibility and media buzz.

This dynamic has not changed since I started in the biz eons ago nor is it indigenous to tech startups.  This dynamic also rang true in my first job toiling the motion picture PR space. Of course, a film's fortunes were determined by its opening weekend box office, so front-ending the PR made perfect sense. (Front-ending the hype around the film's principals is another story.)

Here are a five directional pointers to may help keep the ball moving forward:

• Spot news: the most natural way to earn steady, ongoing media coverage is through the regular release of notable company "news." This may include funding events, usage or traffic milestones, unique new product features, noteworthy personnel announcements, strategic partnerships...  Be creative. Don't be insular. Seek superlatives.

• Trend features:  if the product, app or service is part of a larger trend such as social TV or crowdsourcing, identify and engage anyone with a history reporting or conversing about the topic - from the most influential mainstream reporters to the individual authorities on Twitter who can be found via Listorious or Muck Rack Pro, and then followed. There are a myriad influential voices. Two premium services to identify key bloggers by subject are Traackr and GroupHigh. Be sure to know where your company fits and what differentiates it in the competitive landscape.

• Communities:  invariably, a little research will surface a community of prospective customers or enthusiasts with an inherent interest in a company's new product or service.  These virtual communities are abundant, but don't forsake physical meet-ups, which are eminently discoverable via Meetup and offer great ways to build buzz among sector influentials.

• Showcases: one of the bi-products of Web 2.0  has been the proliferation of industry events and startup showcases. In fact, I'd opine that these events are a bigger industry than the startups they showcase.  Still, a presence at these events can be beneficial for the long term, if only for networking purposes. Gary's Guide, Mashable, MediaPost, MediaBistro and Charlie O'Donnell keep tabs. Ideally, a hash-tagged speaking opportunity will yield some good Twitter buzz. 

• Owned Media: You're thinking blogs, a Twitter handle, a robust Facebook presence, some Pinterest activity, and a YouTube sizzler reel, right? That's only part of it.  More and more influential news sites have succumbed to the Huffington Post's media model of publishing third-party "expert" contributions.  Mashable, MediaPost and Forbes are several that come to mind.  It is thus imperative that founders be prepared to wax poetic, under their own bylines, in any of these, and quite a few other outlets.  

Finally, I would say that none of these tactics alone will sustain a startup for the long haul.  Too often, impatient startup founders will pull the PR plug after that initial spate of boffo coverage failed to provide the coveted sea legs (and user growth) they imagined it would.  "The PR didn't work," one groused.

In today's cacophonous media environment and social media-driven world, long term viability demands the constant and thoughtful application of a range of strategic communications initiatives over time, i.e., six months+. Sure, it's nice to have The Times or Journal give your startup a star turn. But we live in real-time where few pieces in today's New York Times will have more than a 12-hour shelf life.

For a look at the burgeoning NYC tech scene, tune in tonight (Wednesday) at 7pm ET for a livestream of this month's New York Tech Meetup where a handful of startup founders have five minutes apiece to showcase their creations.      

Travolta's PR Camp

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As The Daily Beast and Mediaite breathlessly tout E! Online's story of a lawsuit filed by a male masseur who alleges John Travolta tried to engage in a sexual liaison, this PR blogger cared little about the salacious details.

Instead, he glommed onto the shoddily written statement that Mr. Travolta's "camp" released to E! Online, and wondered what kind of camp crafted this? he took the liberty of editing it.

Before:

"This lawsuit is complete fiction and fabrication," it reads. "None of the events claimed in the suit ever occurred. The plaintiff, who refuses to give their name, knows that the suit is a baseless lie...On that date when plaintiff claims John met him, John was not in California and it can be proved that he was on the East Coast. Plaintiff's attorney has filed this suit to try and get his 15 minutes of fame. John intends to get this case thrown out and then he will sue the attorney and Plaintiff for malicious prosecution."

After:

Apple Taxes & PR

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Who wasn't talking about this weekend's New York Times expose of how America's (and the world's) most beloved company uses creative accounting and legal tax loopholes to avoid paying its fair share of taxes?

Yes it's true, Apple fan boys! $AAPL's U.S. federal income tax rate was less than 10% in 2011, depriving U.S. government coffers of an estimated $2 billion+ and the State of California a hefty amount as well.

I won't get into the numbers.  Better to read Charles Duhigg and colleagues' thoroughly researched piece of reporting. Here's a clip from the reporter's appearance on PBS NewsHour:

Watch How Apple, Other Tech Companies Take Advantage of Tax Code on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

I will, however, add my two cents to Apple PR's response to the allegations. In a nutshell: it fell short.

Sure, the facts as reported by The Times, were not incorrect. Apple did intentionally avoid paying the going U.S. corporate tax rate by taking profits in geographies that legally allow it to do so, i.e.,

"Apple’s accountants have found legal ways to allocate about 70 percent of its profits overseas, where tax rates are often much lower, according to corporate filings."

What's more, Apple is hardly the first nor the only company with smart accountants, a fact neatly documented by other major news organizations nearly a year ago, including "60 Minutes," but with GE as the poster child. Nevertheless, I was surprised by just how defensive the company's prepared statement sounded:

"Apple, in a statement, said it 'has conducted all of its business with the highest of ethical standards, complying with applicable laws and accounting rules.' It added, 'We are incredibly proud of all of Apple’s contributions.'"

"Apple 'pays an enormous amount of taxes, which help our local, state and federal governments,' the statement also said. 'In the first half of fiscal year 2012, our U.S. operations have generated almost $5 billion in federal and state income taxes, including income taxes withheld on employee stock gains, making us among the top payers of U.S. income tax.'"

Chinese Workers at Foxconn

It's almost as if the lawyers and accountants collaborated on this and left the communications pros on the sideline. And it's not like Apple's comms team is unaccustomed to dealing with sticky wickets.  They did a pretty decent job confronting allegations of sub-par working conditions at its Chinese manufacturing partner Foxconn.

Yet I wasn't the only one scratching my head at the language Apple chose to try to neutralize the critical tax report in The Times.

BusinessInsider's Jay Yarow also picked up on it in his piece "Here's Apple's Defensive Response To Accusations That It's Dodging Billions In Taxes" from which he culled a few choice excerpts, adding  his own retorts:

• We've created 500,000 jobs! 

(But it counts the UPS dude who delivers you your iPad as a job created ...)

• The vast majority of our global workforce remains in the U.S.! 

(Yes, because the people who make iPads aren't technically Apple employees, they're Foxconn         employees ...)

• We donate to charity all the time and don't talk about it! 

(That's great, but what does that have to do with anything?)

• We've paid $5 billion in taxes in the first half of our fiscal 2012! 

(Sounds nice, but the NYT says that likely includes taxes from employees, which inflates the number. The whole point of the story is that Apple the company isn't paying much tax.)

Business Insider goes a step further today by reporting on jobs Apple actually destroyed.

I personally don't believe that Apple needed to be as defensive, Who's to blame the company for trying to maximize profit -- and shareholder value? Again, nothing the company did was illegal.

Wozniak & Jobs (via Reuters)

Still, with its cultural underpinnings in 1960s counterculture, not to mention its decidedly left-of-center user base, the company might have done better to acknowledge the inequities of the current tax code. It might have couched its public stand in the context of the considerable costs associated with R&D and attracting talent to remain globally competitive.

On the other hand, when the community college down the street from Apple is forced to slash curriculum (and opportunities for young people in need) due to shortfalls in state support, I think Apple might just re-think its corporate social responsibility initiatives. (What are they, anyway?)