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

Comments

[B.L. Ochman]

That's an absolutely great idea Steve. But given that the vast majority of press releases are ill-conceived, and poorly written, it might not happen until a looooooong time from now.

[David Sifry]

It's really easy to add Technorati links-to-this-press-release to any release, if anyone is reading this at PR Newswire or BusinessWire, we can help you get it set up in about 15 minutes. :-)

Dave

[Tom]

I'll second that emotion, Dave, and hope they're listening (and know some folks are).

As for the first comment, from B.L., I've got to say that while that might be true for a lot of releases, all that means is that they're on par with probably 90% of blogs that are out there, too. And I'm a blogger, first and foremost.

[Caroline Hacker]

This comment is your Nick Carr moment. What a great debate. If press releases had linkometers, it would be the self-policing that the PR industry needs. And I say that as a writer of one-to-many releases.

[Laura]

It sounds to me like you're suggesting a blog where each individual post is a press release for the same company. Could this work if the company was transparent about the purpose of the blog? I ask because I know it's considered bad blog-etiquette (blettiquette?!?) to post in corpspeak or to pitch your company in your posts... wouldn't this type of blog be ripped to shreds by citizen journalists for not being in the "authentic" spirit of the blogosphere?

[David McInnis]

It seems that everything PRN is doing lately revolves around taking features from PRWeb.  I guess that is okay, but hardly innovative.  We rolled out our SEO service over 5 years ago.  We added RSS feeds to our service over 4 years ago and are tracking millions of search-based RSS feeds and over 250 industry feeds.  PRN is a relative newcomer to RSS and SEO, adding both within the last few years.  PRWeb has offered del.icio.us bookmarking from both its PRWebPhotowire service since its launch and more recently PRWeb. 

Trackbacks -- PRWeb does allow inbound trackbacks to press releases.  We will make an official announcement next week.  A press release with trackbacks enabled is available here.  We are the first press release newswire to offer such a service.

[webproject, roman novak]

I think it is the internet - one big source of informations but also - one big source of garbage. If exists some the way how to encrease PR of websites by making articles and links (who can say that its article or garbage?...), always there will exists and there are will be more and more... ;-)

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