David,
Press releases have been a hot topic at our conference in Brussels this week, and I've been recommending that everyone should have a look at the lively discussion that you've been hosting here on the blog. Neville Hobson in his presentation this afternoon said he trys to call it a "news" release because it sidesteps the whole issue of the press release being dead, which in its online form is certainly not the case. One interesting point from the presentation he and Shel Holtz made that's relevant to online news releases: In the web 2.0 world, numbers don't matter. You don't need the circulation of the NY Times to make a big search impact. A news release online can have influence far beyond the impact it would have after passing through the mainstream media filter.

I don't want to interupt this week's discussion with further posts about the conference. But I will add some more news about the conference on Saturday.

Don Dunnington

I did a fairly in-depth analysis of whether direct-to-consumer press releases suck ( http://www.mylongtail.com/blog/2006/06/direct-to-consumer-press-releases.html ). Bottom line: both blog posts AND press releases are going to reach a certain portion of consumers ANYWAY. The damage is done. You might as well write them so that they work when read by consumers. But be careful about using this shotgun approach to getting your message out, as you're passing up on the opportunity to offer exclusives and scoops to your favorite and most influential journalists--who still hold much more sway than this "revolution" gives them credit for.