Steve Rubel notes that PRNewswire has just tacked on an “Add to del.icio.us†feature to all of its press releases. Cool. Very smart. But he then makes one of the smartest comments about PR 2.0 I’ve read in ages:
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?
This is a radically cool idea. I’m not sure how this jives with the press release’s purpose of shaping the reality that follows in its wake – to some extent, there’s a surrender involved. But it sounds like an empowerment that could really change the way people react to releases …