"Younger employees help senior executives unlock social media mystery," declares a Chicago Tribune headline [via PRNewser]. What is this amazing mystery that has been unlocked? For Edelman—the world's largest independent PR firm, and one that loves to market itself as a "digital" expert that will help you, the corporation, navigate the wilds of the internet for a large, large fee—the mystery is, "How can we get people to pay us so much for this shit?"

"I am so all over this Delish thing," Cabot bubbled, punching up delish.com on her computer in her office at Edelman, a Chicago-based public relations firm.

"Oh, you're doing so well!" Spohn said delightedly, counting the recipes Cabot had collected on the food lovers' Web site. "Look, you've got so much!"

Her pride was as evident as the exchange was notable. Though Cabot, 56, is Edelman's central region president with more than 30 years in the business, she is the student. Spohn, a 23-year-old account executive on the firm's digital team, is the teacher.

Hahaha. Do you see what is going on here? Edelman, like many of its peers, is a PR firm that will charge your company a hefty fee for all the digital insight that its 23-year-old account executives can deliver. Because the people in charge aren't really so good on this "internet" thing. Which would be fine if they were not the same people in charge of convincing you, the client, to spend tens (or hundreds!) of thousands of dollars with Edelman for their expert strategic online influencing services. Their mentoring program for the olds is called "Rotnem" because that's "mentor" backwards and you must be a backwards-ass fool to pay money to a bunch of 23-year-olds to teach you how to make a Facebook page and shit at an Edelman markup, when you could get them off Craigslist for much, much cheaper.

"Edelman strongly advocates that companies participate with and engage online influencers." Did you know that Edelman, a massive corporate PR firm, started a blog called "Authenticities"? Edelman, how much do people pay you for your services? Because I am totally going to undercut your prices by one dollar, once the last media outlet finally stops paying employees. Please engage.

[Pic of Edelman's Global Head of Digital Strategy via Flickr]

The blog's explanation for pulling the post:

Basically, we believe that parties who are the subjects of an extensive and sensitive post like yesterday's should know they are being written about. This is both the neighborhood-y, Local thing to do and simple journalistic ethics.

In this case, the author of the piece identified himself to several climbers but not to the people who run the space. We were unaware of this lapse. We had concluded, based on the author's initial pitch, that he planned to be upfront with everyone, and we neglected - our bad - to confirm this after the piece was filed.

Well that's all well and good and friendly, but it's really the type of thing to decide before you publish the extremely extensive post about "this bizarre hybrid of subterranean climbing gym and hippie speakeasy" in Fort Greene. Because the entire thing is, of course, cached by Google. All anyone has to do is click here to read the whole thing, or visit AnimalNY, where they put up a screen shot of it. Now, Jed Lipinski's post on "one of the best kept secrets in Brooklyn" is going to get far more readers than it would have had you simply left it up.

See: The Streisand Effect.
[The Local's 'Why We Unpublished" statement and the original post, via Animal NY

The first thing to get cut in everyone's ad budget was "experimental" ad buys, random things like branded pop-up games and ads in Virtual Worlds and other, mostly online things that probably never worked in the first place. Also getting chopped: mobile ads that go straight to your cellphone—which not only don't work, but actually annoy the consumer in the process of not working.

Areas like mobile, virtual worlds and widgets are expected to be hit particularly hard, as it remains unclear what kind of impact ads in these media have. These campaigns often reach a small number of people, and standard measurement systems have yet to be developed. "When we get into the need to drive results, you can't spend money on the experiments and hope to keep your job and get your sales goals"...

"Virtual worlds are probably one of the things that haven't been proven effective just yet. I can't see us selling virtual worlds to anybody right now," says Lars Bastholm, an executive creative director at independent digital marketing shop AKQA.

Good news for nerds of the purist variety! [WSJ; pic via FPSrantings]

I sent this to Rose and Adelson (both of whom I've met; I'm a friend of Rose).

Great to hear about your decision re: HD-DVD. Writing yet another history of the situation. Would love to hear from you today about how you plan to keep Digg from getting shut down by DMCA takedowns, and how you plan to defend against any lawsuits.

Here's what I got back:

My name is Marcus Tolero and I'm with K/F Communications, P.R. Firm to Digg.com, in San Francisco. We understand that you want to conduct an interview with Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg.com.

Of course, the boring responsible thing is to go talk to Jay. (And I tried but haven't heard back. They must've discovered it was just a blogger.) That's also the rather pointless thing — Kevin was always the site's front man before, so why is Jay suddenly the best source?

Because Jay's the responsible one. Kevin's the one who posted an end-is-nigh blog entry saying "If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying." (Also, Kevin was in LA when this went down.) Apparently the PR firm decided Jay was the safer founder to front. And yes, he gave solid answers to all the outlets above. But there's something missing. Kevin Rose, who gives raw honest takes on Digg news every week on his show Diggnation, could give the same real, un-PR-approved answers here. And that's what Digg's handlers don't want.

And so everyone gets their interview with Jay. Of course, two hours after Fortune posted their interview, Wired posted their own and called it an "exclusive." Sorry Wired, but Jay's talking to everyone. Well, except me.

Steve Jobs claimed, as he introduced the new packaging for the iPod updates he rolled out yesterday, that the new cases would be good for the environment. To paraphrase, he said an equal number of iPods can now be shipped in a much smaller space, which will require fewer trucks and planes to move them around, thereby reducing the company's reliance on fossil fuels.

Uhhhhh-huh. Does anyone know an expert on computer waste who can chat about just how BS this is? Please e-mail me.

Jobs Claims New iPod Packages Are Environmental [Cult of Mac blog]

The ambitious founders of Google [blah blah blah] philanthropy [blah] seed money of about $1 billion [blah blah] tackle poverty, disease and global warming. But unlike most charities, this one will be for-profit [blah blah blah] reflects the philanthropy's nontraditional approach [blah blah] Google.org plans to develop an ultra-fuel-efficient plug-in hybrid car engine that runs on ethanol, electricity and gasoline.

Yeah, Google's gonna save the world with just a billion bucks. Sure, that's just the initial seed money, whatever. But this is a lot of hype for a foundation that hasn't actually done much since it was launched last year. Meanwhile, Bill Gates, demonized by the press for decades, spent $1.5 billion with his $30-billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So in the realm of competitive philanthropy, Google is a scrawny baller trash-talking before the game starts. Until Google makes a jump shot, it's all bullshit.

Philanthropy Google's Way: Not the Usual [New York Times]