Facebook Avoids DC Presence
Politico reports:
Facebook — the subject of congressional hearings, the target of recent criticism and the tool many lawmakers use to connect with voters back home — maintains one of the Beltway’s smallest policy and lobbying shops.
The social network has 500 million users worldwide but only two registered lobbyists stationed in Washington, along with four other public policy and communications staffers.
All told, Facebook spends less money in the Capitol in a year than some tech giants do in three months. The team’s members say the D.C. operation, which began in the home office of staffer Adam Conner in 2007, isn’t your typical lobbying shop; rather, they view it more as an educational operation that can rely on the grass-roots power of its massive user base to convey its community’s needs.
“Other people have to write checks to get in front of legislators; we have members using Facebook at their desks,” said Tim Sparapani, director of public policy and, along with Conner, one of Facebook’s two registered lobbyists.
“We don’t have to spend money because our users ... are tremendously happy with our product,” Sparapani said. “They tell members they like it, members themselves use it, and they like it, ... and that is an advantage that we have that not many other companies have.”
But Facebook’s approach to D.C. has hardly spared it from the acerbic words of some regulators and lawmakers, who sometimes use the company’s mistakes to advance larger arguments for increased federal control over areas such as online privacy.
That spotlight isn’t likely to fade, especially as Congress eyes new ways to regulate how companies such as Facebook can use and share consumers’ information on the Web. Lawmakers have been particularly hard on the site’s privacy record this year.
“There’s definitely a target on their back ... and because of the way they handled all of these privacy issues in the past, they don’t have the best reputation,” said Justin Brookman, senior resident fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Last week, news that Facebook applications developers were misusing user IDs — the unique number coinciding with each individual Facebook account — led Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) to demand answers from the company.
The incident reminded many of a similar blowup earlier this year over Facebook’s instant personalization feature, which automatically shared certain details of a user’s profile with select third-party websites. Four Democratic senators — Chuck Schumer of New York, Mark Begich of Alaska, Al Franken of Minnesota and Michael Bennet of Colorado — were quick to criticize the company for opting all users into the system, rather than setting opt-out as the default.
But those missteps may prove emblematic of the struggles that await Facebook’s D.C. office. Much like Microsoft and Google in their early days, the Facebook lobbying team may “spend far more time dealing with crisis and problems than they will advancing their positive agenda,” said Ralph Hellmann, senior vice president at the Information Technology Industry Council, which represents tech companies such as AOL, eBay and Microsoft.
