On the Internet, there is such a thing as bad publicity, and it ain't Cuil

So, search startup Cuil is reaping the publicity reward of its well engineered PR launch - or not. If Twitter, Friendfeed, Slashdot, the comments on our blog's review of Cuil, a search of Google Blogs or Technorati, or any myriad of ways of looking at the opinions of the Vox Digerati are used, they are harvesting the grapes of wrath.

Even the blogs they assiduously courted and got to write glowing copy pre-test are now biting the hands that fed them the PR releases.

Maybe it was the demi-gaelic name that gave them a touch of the blarney, maybe it was the advice of a previous generation of famous Irishmen:

- There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary - Brendan Behan

- There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. - Oscar Wilde

The idea being that the name recognition was far more likely to echo far and wide than the (mis)deed. But is this true on the Internet, where 2 other things happen:

(i) Persistent commenting - in the old days, the access to media was limited - a few nasty articles in the papers and on TV and it was usually over. Now, owing to the low transaction costs and low distribution costs of writing in the new media, a salacious story gets picked over, rehashed, examined etc by some fraction of 70 million bloggers, twitterers, friendfeeders etc. It doesn't die nearly as quickly.

(ii) Persistence - lets say that Cuil get it right and do great things in future - still, every time you search for them, long into the future, this perfect blogstorm of criticism will be out there, chained to their name via a million strong links. My bet is that they will have to change their name (hey - maybe another launch )

Perhaps the advice of another famous Irishman is better suited to PR in the Age of the Internetz:

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honoured by posterity because he was the last to discover America - James Joyce

In other words, they key is to be the one that is remembered for doing it right, not doing it early.