3 ms·

That's a lot of words for saying "Facebook and Zynga entered a 5-year agreement on using Facebook credits in Zynga games, but details of that are not disclosed"

by vtail 16y ago

That's a lot of words for saying "Facebook and Zynga entered a 5-year agreement on using Facebook credits in Zynga games, but details of that are not disclosed". Reading all those press releases, I'm wondering who is the target audience for them? * Surely it's not an average Facebook user - she does not read press releases. * Surely it's not a journalist or a technical person - they don't need all the marketing mumbo-jumbo. * Surely it's not an (educated) investor, for the same reason. My question is, who?

vtail 16y ago
My conspiracy theory is that bigger firms are expected to have PR departments, and people working in PR departments are expected to write longer paragraphs to justify their existence.
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  Sounds like a regular non-conspiracy theory that is probably spot-on.
  - andrewljohnson 16y ago
    Having worked in PR, there are no length requirements or even people valuing wordiness. What does exist is a stifling press release style that everyone loves to write and no one loves to read. It doesn't mater how long each thing is, but you need "about this company" and "about that company." You need garbage quotes from the execs (written by the PR guy of course), and you need everyone's statement of business in the first paragraph. So, with all that crap, you already have a page of nonsense. Then, add in a few paragraphs on the actual announcement, and that is how the sausage is made. Some press release writers are better than others, but no one can write good press release. Personally, I don't write press releases anymore. I write casual blog posts.
thorax 16y ago
I pretty much assumed it's for the small/medium journalists on a deadline who can use some of the mumbo-jumbo as filler so they have a full article without having to do more than a little bit of their own research.
jkincaid 16y ago
Speaking as a tech blogger who has seen thousands of these, I really don't know who they are written for. The trick is to simply skip over anything that's a quote (which often make up around half of the words). Those quotes are rarely actually said/written by the person they're attributed to, and if a journalist includes them in their article it's usually just filler.
sofuture 16y ago
As someone who develops things in the arena of Facebook, this makes me feel better about the long-term viability of the platform. Smaller developers don't want to see the biggest developers threaten to (attempt to) pull the rug out from underneath the platform.
mattmaroon 16y ago
Other platform developers who are nervous about the changes. The highly-publicized (and probably highly-exaggerated) blowup between Zynga and Facebook has been of little interest to anyone else.

by vtail 16y ago

vtail 16y ago

My conspiracy theory is that bigger firms are expected to have PR departments, and people working in PR departments are expected to write longer paragraphs to justify their existence.

stanleydrew 16y ago
Sounds like a regular non-conspiracy theory that is probably spot-on.
- andrewljohnson 16y ago
  Having worked in PR, there are no length requirements or even people valuing wordiness. What does exist is a stifling press release style that everyone loves to write and no one loves to read. It doesn't mater how long each thing is, but you need "about this company" and "about that company." You need garbage quotes from the execs (written by the PR guy of course), and you need everyone's statement of business in the first paragraph. So, with all that crap, you already have a page of nonsense. Then, add in a few paragraphs on the actual announcement, and that is how the sausage is made. Some press release writers are better than others, but no one can write good press release. Personally, I don't write press releases anymore. I write casual blog posts.

thorax 16y ago

I pretty much assumed it's for the small/medium journalists on a deadline who can use some of the mumbo-jumbo as filler so they have a full article without having to do more than a little bit of their own research.

jkincaid 16y ago

Speaking as a tech blogger who has seen thousands of these, I really don't know who they are written for. The trick is to simply skip over anything that's a quote (which often make up around half of the words). Those quotes are rarely actually said/written by the person they're attributed to, and if a journalist includes them in their article it's usually just filler.

sofuture 16y ago

As someone who develops things in the arena of Facebook, this makes me feel better about the long-term viability of the platform. Smaller developers don't want to see the biggest developers threaten to (attempt to) pull the rug out from underneath the platform.

mattmaroon 16y ago

Other platform developers who are nervous about the changes. The highly-publicized (and probably highly-exaggerated) blowup between Zynga and Facebook has been of little interest to anyone else.