Planet Relations

In 2006, the press release celebrated it's 100 year anniversary — not that too many people took notice. Since then, there has been a lot of talk in the high tech pr industry about the 'death of the traditional press release' and the emergence of the social media release (aka new media release). The best way to understand a social media release is to see an example. A pr company in Silicon Valley developed a template to get the discussions flowing. 

The social media release essentially takes the information contained in a release and distills it into usable chunks. Think of it as a bulleted version of a press release with lots of tools (RSS, social bookmarking, tags, etc) that enable the reader to see who else on the web is talking about the news. It strips away the fluff, leaving the editors to place the 'news' in to a larger context. 

According to Don Bates in To Inform and Persuade: Public Relations from the Dawn of Civilization, Ohio Bell Telephone discovered in the late 1800s that if it handed out 'canned' news in the form of a press release, reporters would stop going to telephone rate hearings and asking pesky questions.

Is the same thing happening today in the green building movement? If a manufacturer calls its product green, is it so? Does having a LEED AP on staff make an architectural firm a green building consultant? Hyperbole is confusing the green marketplace. Perhaps the social media release has a place in the green building world. Who wants to try?