Racepoint employee posts comment as fake Fake Steve Jobs

Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications has an interesting post detailing the dust-up over the fake Fake Steve Jobs.

Apparently, an employee at Waltham-based Racepoint Group, a PR firm, posted a comment to a blog, pretending to be Fake Steve Jobs. Racepoint represents the One Laptop Per Child Project, and this Racepoint employee, Kyle Austin, couldn't resist jumping in to defend OLPC, in Fake Steve Jobs' voice.

Valleywag has more.

Incidentally, Racepoint is part of Larry Weber's W2 Group, about which I posted yesterday. Here's a quote from Larry Weber's recent book, in which he criticizes Wal-Mart's use of fake bloggers to improve the retailer's rep:

The harm it does to a company's reputation when the deception is revealed (which happens sooner than ever on the Web these days) cannot be offset by any short-term gain in sales or publicity.

I agree. To Racepoint's credit, VP George Snell took responsibility for the mistake on the company's blog.

Larry Weber and the Case of the Phantom Blog

I was meeting with an entrepreneur today, and Larry Weber's name came up.

Weber is the PR guru who started The Weber Group, now Weber Shandwick, one of the world's biggest PR firms (and a unit of the Interpublic Group.)

This entrepreneur mentioned that he thought Larry had a blog. I bet him $100 that Larry doesn't have a blog.

Larry, do I win?

Even though Larry published a book this past summer called, "Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business," I think the guy does not have a blog.

Even though Larry writes on page 23, "Senior executive blogs ... can help establish industry thought leadership," I think the guy, now chairman of the W2 Group, does not have a blog.

Even though one of the companies within the W2 Group, Digital Influence Group, touts its ability to help companies go "out on the web to engage in conversations in the blogosphere and communities," I think the guy does not have a blog.

Digital Influence Group does have a blog, but it's not written by Larry.

Is this a case of the cobbler's children not having socks? (Larry is well-known for his penchant for baring his ankles.)