Shooting down a launch. The highest-profile website launch in a long while was last Monday’s unveiling of Cuil.com (pronounced “cool.”) The new search engine was built by former Google and AltaVista engineers, who say it searches three times as many pages as Google. But by the end of the site’s first day, many bloggers and journalists seemed to have found something to dislike, whether it was a prominent site missing from a set of search results or Cuil’s propensity to match photos of one person with Web pages related to someone else. Public relations executive Todd Defren of Boston’s Shift Communications had some advice on how things could have played out differently.

The [PR] agency should have insisted that Cuil slap “BETA” all over the site and any other outbound communication. I checked lots of different sections of the Cuil site, and never saw any hint from the company that they might not be ready for prime time. The messaging is marked by ambition and (in retrospect) arrogance. The agency should have enlisted the search community’s aid. There are plenty of search algorithm experts, [search engine optimization] experts, online marketers, etc., who might be willing to offer free advice for such an ambitious start-up. Taking on Google is a big, hairy, audacious goal: this community could have gotten excited about collaborating on something so audacious. This longer-term, inclusive approach could have cushioned the launch with some built-in compassion for the Cuil engine’s lapses.
www.pr-squared.com

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“The SEC is taking the right steps to embrace the new tools and services that reach people in addition to wire services. With the recognition of blogs as a viable form of disclosure, under certain circumstances of course, the SEC is officially recognizing Social Media and in a sense, socializing the rules associated with Reg FD.

Perhaps, the most significant change stemming from the new SEC guidance is that Web-based disclosure does not have to appear in a format comparable to paper-based information, unless the Commission’s rules explicitly require it.

This is music to my ears as it finally opens the door for the Social Media Release.

For a few years, Todd Defren, Chris Heuer, and I have not only defended and charted the opportunity for Social Media Releases (SMRs), but also fielded emotionally-charged questions from the financial and IR communities asking about whether or not an SMR would ever meet disclosure requirements for Reg FD, and without it, what good would it ever be…”

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