But somehow when a blogger decides to make a negative comment about someone who works in PR, it’s deemed okay.  In fact other bloggers will often rally to their sides and talk about how they too know that all PR people are in fact bad people.  Then some snotty CEO of a startup will chime in about how you don’t need PR, just do it all yourself and you’ll get the same exact results (psst - don’t look at these companies’ traffic charts a year later, it spoils all the fun).  It’s not quite as bad as the flak parking meter enforcers take, but it’s pretty up there.

There’s an article in the NY Times called “Spinning the Web” and it tells some tales about using “influencers” and has some fun-to-read anecdotes.  It’s otherwise full of crap.

I’ll make it quite simple to understand: this industry is simply too vast to generalize.  There are PR firms and individuals who understand influence, social media, and bloggers.  There are firms who don’t.  There are those who know how to leverage all the changing media to benefit their clients.  And there are those who don’t.

Like virtually every other services business, there are companies who are absolutely excellent at what they do, where every dime spent is paid back many times other.  And there are also plenty of buzzword merchants, and people with their heads stuck in the sand still praying on the effectiveness of a wire release.  And by the way, while I like to think it’s really easy to figure out the good from the bad, the bad are all somehow still in business, which means it’s not so clear to everyone.

You know, just like the bad bloggers who accept money for posting without telling anyone, or copy other people’s content, or use nothing but attention-grabbing headlines. Someone’s reading them, otherwise they’d go away, right?

Maybe we can stop with the generalizations while we let the good continue to separate from the bad…

So here I am now, an act in the circus, juggling classes at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and work at Stage Two; luckily for me, I’ll be constantly learning valuable lessons from two environments that I love. I can’t wait to get hands-on with boxee again, and I must admit that the opportunity to work with Veronica Belmont and Cali Lewis – two women I have always admired – at last week’s boxee event made my inner fangirl squeal.  But what really excites me is directly contributing behind the scenes to companies that I already love as a consumer, like Pogoplug and 12seconds.tv. As for boxee, I’m re-entering their world at an amazing stage of their growth!

If I’ve learned anything throughout my education and my short time in the business world, it’s that if you’re offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, then take it! It was a bold move to leave Los Angeles and plant myself in the Bay Area, but after just two weeks, it’s already been well worth it.

Want more? boxee also has huge announcements to share about the Windows launch, new partnerships (we can’t say with who, but trust us… it’ll knock you out), and the long-awaited boxee beta version.

If you’ve tried your hardest and still can’t make it to this boxee event, fear not! There will be a live stream of the entire evening thanks to justin.tv.

Remember to RSVP here and we’ll see you at the Mezzanine!

Now that we’ve moved into a new office, we’re looking for a few amazing “interns” to support our team this summer.   We need project acrobats who are wise in the ways of the force, college students with fresh ideas and crazy stamina who are ready to put their communications courses to work in a real environment.  In short, we want people who are willing to do almost anything and learn the the ins and outs of influencer marketing and media relations.

This is a fun industry where no two days are the same, so you’ll have the chance to get your hands in different types of projects and master a LOT quickly.  Our team is dynamic, young and fiercely competitive (you’ll see that in office Fooseball or Left 4 Dead matches), but we know how to enjoy ourselves while getting a lot accomplished.

Each intern will support two account executives on anywhere from 2 to 6 accounts, but should be flexible enough to adapt to new projects as needed.  This internship is unpaid, so we highly encourage students to apply and coordinate with their college for course credit.

Qualifications:

• Able to work within dynamic start-up environment
• Fast learner and self-starting with impeccable organizational skills
• Extremely strong communications skills, especially written
• Strong academic standing
• Good understanding of consumer technology (video, mobile, etc) with a genuine interest in new trends in tech, media, and culture
• Good understanding of new media, including bloggers and social networks (e.g. you ARE the Twittersphere)
• Confident and articulate, yet brilliantly creative
• Brownie points to gamers, bloggers, torrentfreaks, pop culture geeks (extra bonus points if you can source the quote: “her?”)
• Work hard, play ball, listen, and learn
• Be professional, all the time
• The rest will be determined and crafted around the individual

Our office is in North Beach, close to several MUNI stops, great restaurants/bars, and fine entertainment establishments.

If you’re interested, e-mail us:

1. a resume
2. a short bio
3. why you think this is a good fit for you
4. your favorite blog? Be honest - we don’t mind that you check out Perez or TMZ.com, but we hope it’s not all you read!

Any emails without all 4 of the above will be ignored, and probably marked as spam.  Feel free to let us know if you have any questions. Otherwise, we look forward to hearing from you.

12seconds is well poised to be the video status platform - it’s the easiest way to share short videos. With the new iPhone coming out soon (with video capability) people will want a good way to share short videos between iPhones, and across Facebook, Twitter, and other services.  12seconds is the perfect tool for this.

As always with 12seconds, we opted for a blog post rather than a traditional press release.  Nothing about 12seconds is traditional. :)   The news coverage of the announcement is below, and we will update as stories appear.

• VentureBeat
• NewTeeVee
• Mashable

But today, Pogoplug is announcing new updates that make this simple product even better, faster, stronger (do it!).  They’ve added Search capability to their iPhone and web applications and sharing is now faster and more personalized.  They’ve also included support for a plethora of new operating systems for their drive app.  And these are just the tip of the iceberg.

This Friday, Pogoplug pushes out 3 additional updates!  To complement their search function, they’ll add a sort feature that lets users sort by name, size or file type in both ascending and descending order.  They’re also tacking their number one complaint (that cumbersome ID code) by adding an auto-discovery feature that automatically finds the Pogoplug ID code during registeration.  And for all of the Boxee fans, Pogoplug’s new Media RSS feeds can be used as a media source to access media on your home hard drive can be accessed through the Boxee interface.

For current Pogoplug users, these updates will take place automatically (in fact, some already have).  New users will get their Pogoplug updates as a part of the regsitration process.  And all updates are free, just like their service.  Not bad, Pogoplug!

Today, over 250 Apple stores will start selling a retail-packaged version of TuneUp for $29.95. Additionally, both the retail and online versions of TuneUp now include numerous user interface enhancements and feature
improvements as we mentioned last week.

And if Apple selling TuneUp doesn’t convince you it works - listen to this… since launching the product in the summer of 2008, TuneUp has amassed over 200,000 registered users in over 150 countries, and cleaned more than 125 million songs. Stats like these enabled TuneUp to become the #1 most downloaded iTunes software from CNET’s popular site, Download.com.

So what are you waiting for - go to your nearest Apple store and get your copy (or start downloading now at TuneUp Media).

The company announced today they have a brand new fresh look and feel to the software that complements iTunes.  For existing users, no new download is necessary, the upgrade will happen automatically.

Given the magnitude of Facebook’s photo storage (15 billion photos), the buzz around facial recognition (Apple, Google Picasa, etc.), and the incredible technology they’ve built, we think Face.com is going to do some amazing things.  They’ve already off to a good start (400 million photos…)

As they’ve done in the past, Face.com is issuing their news via blog post (linked above.)  Several publications have written about the news, we’ll keep a running list below, and update throughout the day.

• Mashable
• All Facebook
• Techcrunch
• Ubergizmo
• Inquisitr

Today, Pogoplug has put their source code in an Escrow account and in the event of their bankruptcy, the code will be published on SourceForge.  This strategy leaves the community stakeholders in charge, so that programmers, companies and community organizations can have complete access to rebuild and maintain the necessary servers to keep Pogoplugs working.

Pogoplug made this announcement through a post on their blog, which you can read here. A few members of the press and blogger community have picked up the story.  Here’s what they have to say:

-CNET

-jkOnTheRun

-Ubergizmo

-GottaBeMobile

-Phoronix