By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

To PR or not to PR? That is the burning question. If you hire a PR agency, expect to pay nearly 5 grand a month for press releases and such.

Business Insider’s Brant Cooper just wrote why startups don’t need to hire a PR firm. But Cooper’s colleague, Keith Trivitt, says startups do need PR firms.

Blippy made the mistake of releasing credit card numbers of four of its users through a Google search. Opps! Blippy wrote a blog post to say they messed up.  According to Business Insider:

With Tech Crunch being the go-to site for many tech startups to announce they’ve arrived on the scene, it has set up a false positive in terms of building their brand. While yes, getting placed in TechCrunch can be very beneficial; it’s not the end-all-be-all to building and sustaining a brand. There needs to be a broader communications plan than TechCrunch.

I feel bad for Blippy. They are suffering the same PR strife BP is facing right now. But other PR disasters have definitely suffered much worse.

Image: flickr/ rankXgirl