Exactly. "PR and faffery" are the secret sauce that will make or break your business. You can have the best product in the world, but without "PR and faffery" you will never get beyond a handful of early adopters. More than that, any site that looks like it has become successful without "PR and faffery" has just done the "PR and faffery" in a subtle way so that it looks like it has not happened!
Tautology? You've just defined a successful site as one that used PR and faffery to succeed (even if we can't see it), making it impossible to argue otherwise.
You can argue all you want! I have just expressed my honest belief that all successful sites use "PR and faffery" in some way or the other, even if its not obvious.
