Republican PR Director Calls Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg "totally full of sh*t"

One thing I love about Facebook spokesperson Randi Zuckerberg – she says exactly what she thinks, and she isn’t afraid to use the power of Facebook to back up her opinions.

Mean bar bouncers can lose their Facebook pages (this was later retracted but remains funny). Meanwhile, Holocaust deniers are given a pass.

Now she’s taking on the Republican party, and the Republican party is fighting back.

At a Startup2Startup event last week Zuckerberg talked about her experiences at the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions last year. The relevant clip (care of Ustream) is above.

“At the Democratic national convention we were like rock stars,” Zuckerberg said. “At the Republican national convention I sat in my hotel room by myself for three days, no one would meet with us, I was like begging people to meet with us.” Randi also recounts a conversation on a plane where a Berkeley professor calls Zuckerberg “you’re like the most powerful person in the world.”

The Republicans aren’t amused. Matt Burns, the Director of Communications for the 2008 Republican National Convention left a long comment, calling Zuckerber “full of sh*t”:

With all due respect, Randi Zuckerberg is totally full of sh*t on this one – at least as her comments relate to the Republican National Convention.

As the Director of Communications for the convention, I can tell you we worked closely with Google/YouTube, Ustream.tv, Microsoft, and countless other companies to create a comprehensive and successful online campaign. Those efforts were recently recognized with five “Pollie Awards” from The Association of Political and Public Affairs Professionals. And we utilized Facebook – even if it wasn’t up to Ms. Zuckerberg’s standards – as part of our overall strategy.

Is it possible Ms. Zuckerberg sat alone in her hotel room during the Republican National Convention because she never actually contacted anyone? Or maybe she forgot about the major hurricane barreling toward the Gulf Coast on the eve of the Republican National Convention? Or maybe she didn’t really want to be around a group of conservative Americans in the first place?

According to the Wall Street Journal: “’At the Democratic convention we were like rock stars,’ Zuckerberg said Thursday to a conference crowd of what could safely be called Democratic-leaning entrepreneurs and investors.”

Wait. Ms. Zuckerberg bashed Republicans while speaking to an audience of her liberal friends? Shocker!

In all seriousness, can Ms. Zuckerberg tell us what the Democratic National Convention did with Facebook – aside from pet their enlarged egos and take them to glitzy parties with the Hollywood elite – that Republican National Convention planners didn’t?

I guess next time we won’t make the mistake of letting the business of nominating our Presidential candidate get in the way of the folks at Facebook being treated like rock stars.

Apologies to Facebook. Our bad.

Whenever Randi speaks, point a camera at her. There’s almost certainly a story in there somewhere. All I hope is that Facebook never muzzles her. As the most powerful person in the world, we need to hear more from her, not less.

I’ve emailed Burns for confirmation that he left the comment, but the language is definitely his style.

Update: Burns has responded:

YES. I left it.

I LOVE Facebook as much as the next person, but think the criticism was a
bit misdirected. I can’t speak for the McCain campaign because I wasn’t
working on its new media efforts, but the convention itself made
unprecedented efforts to incorporate new media into our campaign. Over the
course of our convention, we attracted 1.7 million unique visitors, and
strategically partnered with Google/YouTube and Ustream.TV to draw an
additional 7 million unique viewers to our content. And the GOP convention
had more Facebook “friends” than the Democratic National Convention. We had
about 10,000, while the Dem Convention had about 3,300.

GOP facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/GOPconvention2008

Dem facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5209534425

Also encourage you to read the following news item:
http://www.gopconvention2008.com/news/read.aspx?id=557