The Barney Release is Back (or Did it Just Never Die)

During the 1990s and early 2000s I put out my share of Barney Releases. These were all the rage. Basically, a Barney Release is a boilerplate press release announcing a partnership (usually tech related) where two companies say "I love you. You love me. We're a happy family."

Barney releases died off for awhile, killed by the dot-com collapse. The media got sick of them and so did PR pros when they stopped working. However, they have been slowly mounting a comeback in the last few years. Now, something tells me that they're back in a big way with purple pulp flying everywhere. Hey kids, can you say bubble? Uh huh. This time, however, the media can fight back with blogs.

Here's a perfect example - yesterday's Podshow/AIM Pro announcement. Though he doesn't call it a spade outright, Danah Gardner basically smells a big purple dinosaur when he writes: "I have to say that what appears to be a hasty release by PodShow to benefit from the AIM Pro release date buzz only raises more questions than it answers."

I am not surprised that the Barney Release has made a comeback. When I drove up 101 from SFO this morning into San Francisco I thought I was having a flashback to 1999. There were two big billboards - one for Blinkx.tv and another for Meeve. There's no doubt we're in Hype Bubble 2.0. However, this time the same tactics won't work. What does this mean? Oh yeah, Barney Blogging is coming.