Tom Coates reveals authentic version of Peter Saville sticker

For the last couple of weeks there’s been a lot of chatter about Tom Coates’s authenticity shtick:

“There has to be one place in your life where you’re absolutely resolutely not for sale. For me, that place is my personal site, the representation of me online.”

Hear that crackle of vintage vinyl on the 48-track recording? Nice effect, isn’t it?

What’s really surprising about the “super spat” is that anyone at all buys Coates’s notion that bloggers are somehow authentic, while PR is fake.

Get real: every “representation of me online” is mediated, public and more or less carefully planned (the way PR campaigns are planned).

Social networks — blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, you name it — are where you learn how to present yourself, shape your profile and market your brand (w/thanks to Mercedes Bunz).

Nice photo, though — and nothing to do, surely, with the sticker that Peter Saville did for “Creative Review” way back in January — dead authentic.

Is Facebook GeoCities, AOL or Friendster?

It looks like the Facebook backlash (aka “Is Facebook Friendster 2.0?” aka app spam) is gathering force.

Earlier this week Howard Rheingold, whose opinions on social networks, virtual communities and smart mobs probably carry a bit more weight than others, complained about “Facebook friending spam“, “the really awful message board” and “silly apps”, before concluding that “eventually it [i.e. Facebook] will die a slow death… They won’t even be AOL.”

Interestingly, none of the comments disagree.

Trust me, I work in PR

Best sitrep I’ve read in months: Gary Goldhammer’s “The state of the news media“.

Think what you will about a PR agency that publishes a Trust Barometer while keeping a straight face, but with people like David Brain and Goldhammer working for them, you can see why they’re doing well.