Social Press Releases

According to Tom Biro, PR Newswire (PRN) has tacked on an “Add to del.icio.us” feature to all of its press releases. You can see it for yourself here. Tom also notes that this is the second step in a slow evolution of the press release wires. Both PRN and BusinessWire - the Coke and Pepsi of the PR industry - have also rolled out RSS feeds. These are the most basic steps the wires can take to embrace the new world of two-way PR. Now it's time they think bigger.

Consider this. Imagine for a moment that you could talk back to a press release. What would you say? No one is stopping us from doing this on our own, of course. We already link to releases from our blogs and say “I think this is great” or, more likely, “I think this is bogus.” But wouldn't it be great if press releases had comments, trackbacks and a Technorati in-bound linkmeter actually attached to them? News stories do this, so why not press releases? Then individuals could question the release's claims directly under it. Even better, the releases could be appended with a response from the organization that addresses this feedback. In other words, what if press releases were living and breathing entities, not staid and lifeless?

If press releases have a long-term future, this is it.

Technorati Tags: BusinessWire, del.icio.us, PR Newswire, Press releases, Technorati