Congratulations on reinventing the wheel.

I am sure it is technically feasible, and I am sure you could also assign corporate newsmakers with Moderator Privileges, but, the “conversation” should (I think) happen at the newsmaker’s site.

Kami – I think that you must only “hate to say I told you so” because you are so often right-on-the-money that it would become painfully repetitious.

But, to the larger point of “how this might work for my clients” – I am surprised that everyone makes this so complicated. We are simply talking about adding multimedia, links, and community-friendly features to news content. Making the news release more web-friendly…

The release has a Social Media Newsroom link of the agency. All of our PRNN clients receive a free SMN with their account. When you came out with your SMN template, a light went off in my head. I knew this had to be a standard feature of any of our press releases. The PRNN network is being developed around a modified blog engine as comments are an option that we could include at any time. To identify with sheep(blogs) you must act like a sheep and eat the same grass. We have not activated the comment section because there is a potential for issues as discussed. We can accept SMPRs and hybrid releases. We are not complete with development, but think we are on the right track for a first stab at SM releases. I do like the idea of Shannon’s “Stamp of Authenticity”. This would eliminate confusion. I recommend we start a team that creates a universal PR mark other than ### that differentiates a press release from any other published information such as a blog.

Shannon – I think your comment is interesting, valid and thought-provoking. And, your concept re: a “stamp of authenticity” could ALSO address Stephen’s point (and Tom Foremski’s call for a “trustmark” approach):

The BLOG ENTRY (on a NEWS-specific blog, btw, not a general-purpose blog) could contain the Social Media-savvy news content, which has been vetted and given the “seal of authenticity” by the wire services (who might also issue it, echo-style, thru their own traditional channels.) Hmm…this might serve everyone’s purposes?!

Mark, I ain’t much of a drinker, so you won’t see me embarrassing myself at the Thirsty event – but I will definitely report back on my conversations with the wires’ reps.

Merrick – again, great content and damn good PR thoughts … thank you!

I did see a link to a press kit on HP’s site so they get some link juice there.

I think the missed opportunity is that they have not released something on Youtube about this. There are a number of ways they could go with it, like showing someone buying the cartridges and then going home and printing away and then making a point of showing when the refilled cartridges die and how the originals keep going. That may even be digg worthy.

But is a blog post a legal document of an organization like a news release is? I don’t think it is especially since blog posts are meant to be written in a personal tone.

Just wanted to show you this too. Remember the Belkin smnr you linked to some time ago?

Look at the pick up it’s had in Technorati:

http://technorati.com/search/http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/releases/uploads/10_09_06SportCommand.html

145 links from bloggers. Pretty impressive in my opinion.

You shouldn’t be so surprised about H-P creating and issuing this kind of news. They have some very smart people there and are doing some interesting things. (Note: What brought this to light for me is when they acquired one of my clients (now ex-) a few months ago – who was solidly in the Web 2.0/social media space).

I look forward to reading your thoughts on what the wires are doing. I have been talking to them for quite a while about what I want them to do and what they can do today. All do some things really well, but they all need to do more.

I look foward to talking to you about it, perhaps at PRSA Boston’s Thirsty Thursday this week?

Have you seen the number of mistakes that wire services catch? PR Newswire already caught 96,022 errors this year. We could continue to take advantage of their expertise in news editing before posting content.

I’d like to see wire services develop a process to take in our releases, edit them, and spit back a version that we could post. Done right, it could be automated, efficient, and would include the same type of safety net that they provide to us now.

We could even post a little, “Edited by X Wire Service” as a stamp of authenticity. Obviously, there’s room for abuse there, but this is just one of the ways the wire services can play in the social media space.