So, how do those of us who care about things—like respect for our chosen profession—go about making that a reality? Good question!

Here are some thoughts to consider:

I’ve said that I don’t think we need a new definition of what those of us in the business of public relations do. And if you’re in the PR industry, you should consider what Harold Burson, co-founder of Burson Marstellar, had to say a year or so before the ‘new definition’ of PR was revealed:

Public relations is a process that impacts public opinion. Its objective is to motivate individuals or groups to take a specific action. Like buying a certain brand of toothpaste or automobile; voting for a specific candidate; supporting one side or the other of a political issue; signing up with one cable provider over another. As such, public relations is an applied social science that draws on several social sciences, among them psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, geography. Actually, one could more accurately describe public relations as a maturing applied social science. It is all too slowly developing theories and a body of knowledge, mainly case histories, that can bring about greater discipline, uniformity and predictability in delivering our services.

 

Everything we do is directed at people’s opinions and attitudes. We can affect opinions and attitudes in only three ways,

 

One, we can seek to change a presently held opinion or attitude.

 

Two, we can seek to create a new opinion or attitude.

 

Three, we can reinforce an existing opinion.

 

In 2011/2012, for some reason, PRSA lead a crowdsourcing campaign and a public vote (that resulted in some 1,447 votes in an industry that is exponentially larger) to ‘modernize’ the definition of public relations. The result? A modernized definition of public relations that reads like this:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

As you might imagine, Burson wasn’t all that thrilled with that newfangled definition. And this quote succinctly sums up his thoughts:

As for a definition of public relations, I believe the most authoritative goes back to Edward L. Bernay’s classic Crystalizing Public Opinion published in 1923. It forms the basis of a definition I have valued over the years:

 

Public relations (pub’lic rel-la’shuns) n. sing. – An applied social science that influences behavior and policy, when communicated effectively, motivates an individual or group to a specific course of action by creating, changing or reinforcing opinions and attitudes. Its ultimate objective is persuasion that results in a certain action which, to succeed, must serve the public interest.

 

What Burson says makes great sense to me. His argument, essentially, is that by reducing the role of public relations professionals to that of communicators, we take the heart of what we really do out of the equation, and thereby diminish the value we bring. Why in the world would anyone want to redefine a profession in such a manner that diminishes its role and/or its ultimate value? On this, I’m with Burson.

I also think that Paul Holmes of the Holmes Report makes quite a bit of sense his essay entitled “What Is A Public Relations Consultancy?“.

One of the big points both Burson and Holmes are making is that we’ve collectively gotten too caught up in our push to publish a story at the expense of what we really do. And that is functioning in our role as consultants and business advisors to the organizations for whom we work. Telling the story is only part of what public relations needs to become again. Our real mission is—or at least should be, persuading, motivating, changing thoughts and opinions, affecting change in a way that benefits and serves the public interest. At least that’s why I got into this business–how about you?

Jack Martin, global chairman and CEO of Hill+Knowlton Strategies, makes that point in his Fifth Seat Philosophy that the Holmes Report quoted in this article:

“When faced with significant strategic decisions, companies traditionally turn to four advisors: legal counsel, investment bankers, management consultants and forensic accountants,” the firm’s website explained. “Each is trusted to review their area of expertise, but none factor public trust into their final analysis. We fill a Fifth Seat in your boardroom, helping transform your corporate reputation into competitive advantage.”

 

And that, my friends, is the heart and soul of public relations. Or at least I proffer that it should be. Taking a seat in the boardrooms of the companies we serve, large or small, and helping transform corporate reputation into a competitive advantage. Helping to affect change, in some fashion or another. Doesn’t that sound infinitely more like something you’d like to devote your career to than that ‘new’ definition of PR referenced above?

All of this? Well, it’s making me think about what we should be doing differently. Sure, we’ve got people in this business who don’t live up to high standards, but what profession doesn’t? Step up and throw the first stone if you think you work in an industry that doesn’t contain a few snake oil salesmen and that doesn’t make mistakes along the way.

Most of us in the public relations industry work very hard at taking our clients’ interests to heart as well as the public’s interests to heart. And we work very hard at doing the job the way it should be done.

But we do need to work on our industry’s reputation. Clearly. What do you think? What should we be doing differently? If you’re in the PR industry, is your role similar to what Burson defined—or not? How so?

This post originally ran on PR Breakfast Club. A shorter version also ran earlier on this site and has been enhanced thanks to some serious assistance from my friend Shelly Kramer.

One of the reasons I opted to get a degree in public relations (and yes, it is a Bachelor of Science degree) is because I didn’t want to follow in my successful father’s footsteps.

He was a salesman (or as he liked to call himself, a peddler), and I wasn’t the least bit interested in sales as a career path. And, while I was getting that degree, nobody disillusioned me that I was starting a career in sales. That quickly changed.

In PR, Selling is Everything!

For better or worse, it didn’t take long after stepping into my first job to figure out that selling is just about everything in PR. I may not sell valves and regulators as my dad did, but I’m always peddling ideas, concepts and sometimes, even products. You can talk about convincing or persuading all you want, but trust me: when you accept that a job in PR is a job in sales, you’re going to move your career ahead much faster.

Selling is Solving Problems

My dad was a very successful salesman and eventually owned the company. He always gave some credit for that to a Dale Carnegie course he took when he moved from being an engineer to being a sales engineer. He said it taught him that selling was about satisfying people’s needs. When I asked him what the keys to success were, he said it boiled down to much more than just knowing your product better than anyone else.

He told me it doesn’t matter how great your product is. If it doesn’t solve your customers’ needs and let them sleep soundly at night after buying it, then you can’t sell it. He said his job was really understanding the needs of his customers and finding ways to satisfy them.

Great PR Requires Understanding Your Clients

Dad and I talked a lot about this. As a salesman, in addition to solving problems for his clients, it was also his job to understand his customers’ different plants and processes at least as well as they did. Beyond that, he had to know what  constituted a win for each of them. He had to make sure that all the links in the chain on his side of a transaction were in place to deliver not just the product, but winning experiences for his customers.

You need to study and understand the space your customers live and breathe in. Who do they compete with for support within their organization? If you’re a consultant, you need to do that analysis for each and every client. You can’t give good advice or create winning scenarios if you don’t understand the competition in every area. And no, you don’t need an MBA to get a grasp on the competitive environment. Here are some great tips on how to collect this information.

A Career in PR is a Career in Sales

If you’re going to be successful in PR, you need to create winning experiences for your customers. You have to figure out what they and their organization need. You also need to understand what they’re really looking for—and how to deliver it. In between, you need to know what everyone in the delivery chain needs—reporters, bloggers and thought leaders, to name a few—to help you get the win for your client.

Money Makes the World Go ‘Round

When you opt for a career in PR, you also have to understand what makes every organization run is money. I think everyone in business (not only PR pros) should know how to read income and cash flow statements and understand a balance sheet. If you don’t, read a book or take a basic accounting class. Money is what matters even for charitable organizations and the bottom line is what most executives really care about. You should, too.

Whether you’re an employee or a consultant, you should know the financial condition of the organizations you work for and with. Yes, I know that is math and numbers. Get over it. You can’t avoid it. I don’t understand algebra to this day, but I can pretty reliably tell you if an organization is winning or losing based on those three financial documents. That’s how the people who matter most keep score, and so should you.

PR is Also Psychology

There is also a bit of psychology necessary when you’re a PR professional. If you’re smart, you’ll learn about basic human motivations and apply them to the organizations you work with. Observe what motivates them and how others respond. Bottom line—if you don’t know what keeps the people important to the organization up at night, you can’t really sell them anything. People buy or support something based on how they think that choice will make them feel about themselves. You have to make them feel good about choosing you.

Lawyers Are Your Friends

Some of the smartest decisions I’ve ever made or advised my clients to make were the result of understanding legal issues and preventing problems from happening as a result. When you’re offering PR advice to clients, make sure you have some understanding of the legal issues that can come into play in terms of what could come back to bite you or the organizations you work with. Make friends with the attorneys. Ask smart questions. Lawyers will respect you if you respect them and their function. And, trust me. It’s a good idea to know the legal team before you find yourself in a fast-moving crisis situation. That’s why I always ask for a briefing from the legal department when starting a new assignment. It’s just good business.

Respect the Reporters

Lastly, if you’re going to be in PR, it’s critical you understand and respect reporters and others who can influence the outcome of an assignment. They’re not there to serve your purpose. They have their own jobs that are tough enough. Know why your message is important to them and the people they serve. And tell them that. Don’t beat around the bush and dance around words. Shoot straight with them and respect their time, brainpower and obligations and they’ll typically do the same for you.

There you have my tips for success in PR. These are just some basics you need to know. Success in public relations is so much more than a good writer. Knowing how to create and execute a great campaign is entry level for this business.

I’ve said it before. Being a successful PR person means being one of the best-informed and most curious people in the room. You have to show a willingness to learn, an ability to listen and an understanding that PR is really all about selling something to someone.

What do you think? What would you add to this list?

I’ve said that I don’t think we need a new definition of what we do, but you should check out what Harold Burson, co-founder of Burson Marstellar had to say a year before the new definition was revealed and just after:

Public Relations Defined – Harold Burson’s Blog 4/20/2011

A “Modern’ Definition of Public Relations? Why? – Harold Burson’s Blog 3/5/2012

I also think that Paul Holmes of the Holmes Report makes quite a bit of sense in this essay.

What Is A Public Relations Consultancy?

 One of the big points both Burson and Holmes are making is that we’ve gotten too caught up in our push to publish a story at the expense of being consultants and business advisors to the organizations we work for. Telling the story is only part of what public relations needs to become again.

Jack Martin, global chairman and CEO of Hill+Knowlton Strategies makes that point in his Fifth Seat Philosophy that the Holmes Report quoted in this article:

 “When faced with significant strategic decisions, companies traditionally turn to four advisors: legal counsel, investment bankers, management consultants and forensic accountants,” the firm’s website explained. “Each is trusted to review their area of expertise, but none factor public trust into their final analysis. We fill a Fifth Seat in your boardroom, helping transform your corporate reputation into competitive advantage.”

All of these are making me think about what we should be doing differently. Sure, we’ve got people in this business who don’t live up to high standards, but what profession doesn’t? Step up and throw the first stone if you think you work in one that doesn’t make mistakes… Most of us, however, work very hard at doing the job right. But we need to work on our industry’s reputation.

Before I post more of my ideas, what do you think?

What’s interesting is this is not a new conversation or problem. It’s been going on since before I earned my Bachelor’s in PR way back when. It’s about much more than being able to tell people what you do for a living. There’s a fundamental lack of respect for PR practitioners in the public view, and a lot of it has to do with the vagaries of the compensation model.

I can’t even count how many management meetings I’ve been part of over the years that tried to tackle this issue, first with Hill and Knowlton and then at GCI Group. How do we improve profit margins? Can we change the business model? We also talked about those issues at seminars led by instructors from leading universities, such as the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School. We looked at it from quite a few angles and didn’t come up with much we could actually afford to implement. So we pushed the problem ahead and we’re still dealing with it.

If we want people to take PR more seriously, we need to make two big changes:

We need a greater focus on measurement and accountability.

The PR industry has to move away from selling time and best efforts and move toward being paid for results. That requires more work on developing benchmarks for what a PR program should be expected to do in both marketing and corporate situations.

We also need to find the budgets to do measurement and testing to prove what we’ve accomplished so we can start moving away from billable hours. If you’ve ever been part of a cross-discipline pitch team that includes advertising, you’ve probably been amazed at how much research and testing advertising can afford for a new business campaign. If PR could get even a small percentage of that money, we could arrive at a pay-for-performance model pretty quickly.

Finding the budget for much better research and measurement, especially quantitative measurement of our contributions to real business goals, would be a huge step forward for the PR industry.

We must improve training and development.

Our training and professional development needs to go way beyond honing communications skills. Spin Sucks fearless leader, Gini Dietrich, wrote a piece on this a few weeks ago with ‘Five Skills You Need You Won’t Learn in PR Class.’

Huh? I don’t disagree with her list, which included business, marketing, budgeting and forecasting management and leadership and a willingness to learn. And yet, I wanted to shout, “Shouldn’t these subjects already be taught as part of PR?” If PR practitioners want respect as true professionals, we need a better understanding of how organizations function and what keeps CEOs up at night.

Make no mistake—our job is to deliver what management needs. Our job isn’t telling stories or getting coverage. These are just tools. Our job is to understand and convince people both inside and outside of the organization and act as a bridge between the two.

I say forget about wordsmithing. Let’s instead commit to making the substantive improvements needed to change the negative perception of the PR industry once and for all.

What do you think?

(This post originally appeared on SpinSucks as “Shift the Perception of PR.”)

There is no question that BofA, and pretty much all banks, have been hurt by new limits on debit card transaction fees and other restrictions imposed by Congress. Most of us understand that. We also understand that banks are in business to make a profit. They are not charities. No problem.

But I can’t think of any way to sell the idea that the solution to a big business problem is to get more money from the segment of customers who can least afford it. That’s what the debit card fee tried to do, and that’s where this one sounds like it’s going. If the reports are accurate, I expect more backlash.

I just can’t imagine this strategy ever working. I wouldn’t even put the idea in writing considering the current economic climate and low public opinion of financial institutions these days. You’d be better off just telling people you don’t want their business.

On the other hand, if this statement from the WSJ story is correct we may have even bigger problems ahead…

“J.P. Morgan said Tuesday that 70% of customers with less than $100,000 in deposits will become unprofitable for the bank because of new regulations, such as caps on overdraft fees.”

We may not like our banks, but they’re necessary. Don’t you agree?

So, is BofA really deaf or can’t they afford to listen? A few things to think about:

1. Perhaps BofA is looking at the airlines and thinking, “Why can’t we do that?” Baggage fees certainly weigh heaviest on the people who travel the least. (And why the hell have we let the airlines get away with all their fees?)
2. Where did the money saved from those lower debit card transaction fees go? I don’t see any evidence that retailers put it back into consumers’ pockets.
3. Is anyone else tired of hearing that these problems are the unintended consequences of legislation to protect us? I’m thinking there might be too many lawmakers protecting us on the path to the poor house.

On a brighter note, thank you for all the encouraging calls and emails last week about me stopping smoking. Amazingly, it is still working! Tomorrow will be two weeks without a cigarette.

Tell me what you think…

This year promises to be extra special, too. The original plan was to go with a very good friend and his father. Now, my brother who has joined me on every other trip is coming along. And, as a bonus, we’re bringing his two sons back for their second trip. It’s hard to believe it’s been eight years since we all got together out there, but the last time was when I took everyone there to celebrate my 50^th birthday.

Thinking about it, it’s been five years since I’ve seen those views myself. That makes me realize I really need to do a better on finding time to enjoy the finer points of life.

My Shared Views are a bit limited this week. I’ve been micro-focused on being a non-smoker and it’s working! Considering I’ve been a pack plus per day smoker since I was 19, I’m both shocked and thrilled that I’m about to cross a week without a cigarette. Yes, I may falter but I’m going to make this work.

With that said, these ideas were like a breath of fresh air this week:

Purpose can’t be rationalized: I met Simon Sinek, the author of Start With Why, last fall at an Air Force Public Affairs conference. It is a great book and the concept is so right. I hope I’ve been doing this throughout my career, but Simon sure says it better…

Check out his most recent blog post about rationalizing. And when you have 20 extra minutes make sure you watch this video on “The Definition of Purpose.” Those two pieces make me think every day about how everything I do needs to be consistent with my values and core beliefs.

I like to cook: It’s become part of my routine and right now I need things that keep me busy. Last night I tried a Cioppino recipe – basically a San Francisco seafood stew – and my wife labeled it one to repeat. It’s a straightforward recipe that just takes a bit of time. I had chicken broth open so I used that instead of crab stock. And because of allergies, I replaced the muscles with Bay scallops and it worked great. My inclination was to go to the high end on the spice recommendations but didn’t, and I was surprised how much flavor came from the minimum. My taste buds are reawakening! Anyway, it was delicious and we highly recommend it!

I hope you saw the great guest post on 3 Ways to Prevent PR Disasters by my friend, Jenifer Olson, on Tuesday. She has helped me with this site and all my posts so she had to be the first. Thank you, Jenifer.

Speaking of guest posts… I’ve done one for Spin Sucks that should appear next week. Many thanks to Gini Dietrich and Lisa Gerber for extending the invitation. I hope what I’ve written will stimulate a conversation.

Have a great week, everyone!

I felt kind of sorry for the McDonald’s social media director who unleashed a backlash of negative press with the #McDStories hashtag promotion last month, as shared in this Mashable post. During my more than 20 years in marketing communications and PR, I’ve found experience can be a strong, if harsh, teacher.

That got me thinking about some of my most important communications lessons over the years and these three seem relevant to the McDonald’s issue:

1.     Never start a public conversation you’re unprepared to handle.

Early in my career, I wrote and delivered scripts to launch new products and promotions from stage during conferences. These meetings typically drew several thousand independent sales professionals from around the country.

One of the first lessons I learned was never ask an open-ended question from stage, especially if you aren’t 100% sure of the answer. Questions such as “Do you like it?” or “Isn’t it fabulous?” can backfire. There will always be people in your audience who don’t like it or think it’s terrible. So, unless you’re prepared for these people to hijack your message by shouting, “No, it sucks!” just don’t go there. It only takes one person to turn what you hoped would be positive PR into a disaster.

Takeaway: If it’s your stage, or a platform such as Twitter, don’t initiate conversations you’re not prepared to handle. In McDonald’s case, creating a #McDStories hashtag had the same effect as asking an open-ended question in a crowded auditorium.

2.     Get to know your audience using the ‘upside down’ approach.

This lesson came later in my career. As a new manager, I was asked to recommend improvements to an existing program and present them to field employees during break-outs at an upcoming conference. Over the next few weeks, I worked to understand the program and solicited input from both the corporate and field management teams. Based on my research, I came up with a plan I felt sure would increase profitability and make everyone happy.

Except it didn’t. It seems I missed talking with the one group of people I should have listened to from the very beginning—front-line employees responsible for servicing customers in the field. Relying on management perspectives alone was a mistake.

Since then, I’ve made it a point to understand views at all levels of an organization, using what I call an “upside down” approach. I talk with customers and customer-facing employees first, and then work my way back up through the organization. This helps me ferret out critical issues before they turn into problems.

Takeaway: If you’re a manager, and especially if you’re a social media manager, make it your business to understand the problems and perceptions of front-line employees and customers. If the McDonald’s social media director had fully grasped the consumer anger over the perceived nutritional content of the company’s menu, he might have decided against running a promotion with a McDStories hashtag just begging to be hijacked as a trending topic. 

3.     Listen and be responsive to your naysayers.

If you make a mistake, own it, apologize and take steps to fix it. Ignoring something only makes it worse. In #2 above, I knew by the end of the first session that I needed to change my presentation style from one of “Rah-Rah” to “We hear you.”

For the following sessions, I went off-script by telling the audience upfront I’d already heard and understood many of the objections to the original program from their fellow employees. I asked for their indulgence while I showed them how the new program might address some of these issues, and then told them I would answer any other questions after the presentation.

During the Q&A, I walked into the audience and invited people to ask questions using the microphone so everyone could hear and participate. If I knew the answer or had the authority to change something, I said so. If I didn’t know the answer, I said I would find out and get back to them, and I did.

After the conference, we sent everyone a complete Q&A from all the sessions, along with what was being done to address any outstanding issues. We also created a field advisory board to solicit ongoing feedback. This generated positive momentum throughout the company, and many initial detractors became strong supporters.

Takeaway: Never ignore your naysayers. Listen to them, learn from them and take their perspectives into account when developing your promotional strategies. This will help you get a better understanding of the core issues, consider the risks/benefits of your decisions and prepare intelligent responses to potentially damaging scenarios.

But what do you think? Are we being too hard on big brands that screw up as this thought-provoking post from Danny Brown suggests, or should we expect more?

Jenifer Olson consults with a variety of organizations throughout the U.S., drawing upon experience honed from over 20 years designing and delivering senior-level marketing communications and PR for a wide range of industries. Follow her on Twitter @JenaJean.

With that, here are some other views that got my attention this week:

Redefining PR: In my first post on this blog, I talked about my belief that PR tools may have changed, but not the job. I don’t think the definition has changed one iota since I was in college over 30 years ago, which boils down to:

1. Listen to the people who will make a difference in your organization’s future.
2. Give your best advice on how to get the support needed to succeed.
3. Share your story with people who count in a clear, concise and credible way.

What’s different? As Thoreau aptly put it, “Men have become the tools of their tools.”

In any case, I’ve seen quite a bit of chatter this past week on PRSA’s recent crowdsourcing effort to arrive at a new definition of PR and here are their three finalists. I don’t think any of these are earth-shatteringly different or good. And reading the Spin Sucks guest post outlining the PRSA Response to PR Definition Criticism didn’t inspire me either.

There have been some lively discussions on this, though. Maddie Grant has an excellent summary and conversation over at Social Fish with a post that asks Why Can’t We Define Public Relations? Long post alert notwithstanding, I recommend you check it out.

Selling our own information: This piece from The New York Times’ BITS blog, Start-Ups Seek to Help Users Put a Price on Their Personal Data got me thinking about the future of social networks. What if they had to pay us to collect and sell our information? Wouldn’t that be a bit disruptive to the current business models? Plus, haven’t we already given most of our information away for free? I think this ship may have already sailed. You?

Success starts with those closest to us: I often give talks about the importance of making employees your first audience for all communications. These two articles aren’t new, but I recently tagged them as good reminders to take care of your own house first: Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch via Fast Company; and, Your Culture is Your Brand from the Zappos archives. Enjoy.

What’s different is that today more people then ever volunteer intimate details about their lives to all their friends online, if not the whole world. So, it’s no surprise companies are looking to make money on this information by selling it to people like us who want to sell things to other people.

Capitalizing on this information is the entire reason money has been invested in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and every other for-profit social media site. All those servers and software have to be paid for somehow. I get that and accept it as long as the companies are up front about what information of mine they’re collecting and selling, and to whom. Is that really too much to ask?

Last week, I was very glad I’d passed on the mobile social network known as “Path” after I read this New York Times piece. While it seems the company has since done the right thing, the network initially uploaded its users’ address books without their knowledge and/or approval, creating a lot of negative backlash. The company’s first response to the outcry was that it was an “industry best practice,” which is scary in its own right. Eventually, they realized they went too far and have promised to delete what they borrowed.

That would have been more than an “Oops!” to me. But thanks to this, I’m now looking for better encryption for my contacts list just in case I sign up for something that buries its intent to use my information in some incomprehensible Terms of Service (ToS).

I spend a ton of time reading those things before I sign up. I need to know what I’m giving people/companies permission to access. Like you, while I have a public profile, I also have information on my computer that is confidential. So, if the ToS isn’t clear, I don’t sign up. If I have to guess what I’m agreeing to, my answer is always “NO”.

So far I’m OK with what the networks I’m using are collecting and selling because I appreciate the tools they’re providing, but there are limits on what I’m willing to share in exchange for this access. I would like to see complete transparency as an industry best practice. I’m tired of digging through the ToS legalese to figure it all out, or worse, having to opt out of something after the fact. Just tell us up front what you want and what you’re going to do with it in plain language. We’ll probably say yes, but we should know what we’re getting into.

Do you agree?

I keep bookmarking things with a tag to share and just haven’t gotten around to it. I need to change that and might as well start today with what I’m calling my “Shared Views.” It will be just things that strike me as interesting from the myriad of things I read each week, with a special focus on my friends who blog and teach me stuff every day.

Shared Views:

• Pinterest: I have done some poking around on Pinterest. I have to admit I don’t completely understand the fascination, but Shelly Kramer had an enlightening post this week: Pinterest: Quietly Making Money From Your Pins? Like Shelly, I’m all for sites making money because I do know that is a business imperative, but I do wish they’d be open and upfront about it. Let me decide if I want to be part of it. And, for the record, my friend Maggie McGary doesn’t seem care. She just loves her some Pinterest. You decide. They’re both smarter than I am.
• Agency Training Programs: I know from experience how hard it is to find the time and resources for professional development in an agency environment, but it has to be a priority and I’m glad to find Ken Jacobs (@kensviews) talking about it (in spite of the mutual ‘views’). Ken is a rather new addition to my RSS feed. Thank you, Gini Dietrich, for the Spin Sucks #FollowFriday Recommendation. Anyone in a leadership position at an agency who wants a successful business really must read Ken’s series on Designing Your Agency’s Training Program. Find a way to make it happen. You won’t regret it.
• What is Facebook really worth?: There was so much talk about this recently that it is hard to decide where to start. Facebook’s initial filing leaves plenty of wiggle room, but most people are putting the valuation at $50 to $100 billion. You have to be kidding me! Google’s current valuation is an earnings multiple of 20 to one. Apple gets around 13 to one. Facebook wants 50 to 100 to one? Seriously? Here’s the New York Times Deal Book look at it. But my favorite post, if you have access to it, came from Holman Jenkins at the Wall Street Journal. I’d say the only way to profit from this stock would be to buy it at the offer price with the right to sell it in the frenzy of the first day. So I won’t be buying this stock anytime soon unless they give it to me because, like you, I am the product they’re selling–and I’m not betting on how much they can earn from exploiting what we share.

I hope you find this interesting or even useful. If you can’t access the Wall Street Journal and really want to read the article use the contact form to send me your email address.