Roland Tanglao's opinion about the death of PR is perhaps overstated, however, he is absolutely correct in pointing out that the world of PR (as we know it) has changed and will continue to morph because of the rich publishing power of personal syndication and Weblogs. However, the nature of open-standards and specifications such as RSS and loosely-coupled information will also create new opportunities for markwting organizations to create a balance that preserves the role of business communications.

"PR departments in general feel threatened by such tools - not only blogs buts also RSS and wikis - because those departments are resistant to change in message control (where the control passes to the audience)." -- Neville Hobson

Imagine a newsreader that's simple enough for non-technical people to use, requires no understanding of RSS, and delivers feeds in the context of a vibrant and compelling user interface complete with brand identity. Smart Internet applications like this will provide firms with a way to embrace the emerging interest in blogs and syndication services while maintaining message control.

Neville is right about the opportunities for RSS to enhance public relations.

"The new reality is that blogs and RSS present a phenomenal opportunity to any organization to embrace these new communication channels and engage quickly, directly and effectively with customers, investors, partners and other audiences. If you can't start a blog yet, the one thing you should do is RSS-enable the corporate PR and marketing information on your website - and get your press releases out via webfeeds as well as by traditional means. (I've yet to find any large company who offers open RSS webfeeds of their press releases from their websites.) It's a stark choice: Evolve or die." -- Neville Hobson

We've done some research in identifying how RSS PR and marketing solutions can be employed with greater ease. Our SmartStream Alliance venture provides new capabilities for RSS and even rich media feeds such as audio and video.

"PR firms love to control the message, control who says the message, control who has access to the message, and the timing of the message, according to the Internetnews.com article. It's not just PR firms, though - it's the broad area of organizational communication which includes everyone whose role is message control." -- Neville Hobson

When  I say to prospective clients - "your information should find you when you need it and when you haven't seen it before" - they get that glazed look in their eyes. It's understandable - the information industry has conditioned us to believe that we should proactively search for everything in an ad-hoc fashion. But this will change, and RSS will likely be responsible in many small ways.

"I've long believed that the ultimate search technology is one you don't explicitly use. Imagine turning the search paradigm on its head—instead of us finding stuff, why not stuff finding us? Pushing this idea to the extreme, our applications would understand what we are working on and automatically provide us with exactly the information that we need in every specific context. In that scenario, we would never need to search for stuff because the right stuff would find us." -- F. Andy Seidl

If you're in the public relations business and you're not producing alternative (machine-readable) formats of everything you write, you are missing a big opportunity. RSS is one of the most cost-effective and meaningful technologies for media rooms. If you're a journalist and not using RSS feeds as the most important diet of information consumption, you are overworked and operationally inefficient.

"Yesterday I spoke with two acquaintances, both of whom have decades-long track records in the high-tech biz, and neither of whom has ever used an RSS newsreader. When I mentioned RSS as an alternative to mailing lists, both said the same thing: "But I don't have time to visit 30 different websites in order to find things out." Of course, that is exactly the problem that RSS solves. And has been solving, for me, since 1999." -- Jon Udell

RSS is all about moving information more efficiently and detecting change more accurately. Media rooms are designed to create awareness of important (and late-breaking) information. RSS Newsreaders are designed to create instant awareness of important (and late-breaking) information that has recently changed. Can the case for immediate and widespread adoption of RSS be stated any simpler?

Andy Seidl (my co-founder at MyST Technology Partners) mentioned this idea and it sort of flew right over my head. Then it dawned on me (when he said - "MyST logo's on stamps?") - PhotoStamps is one additional method of extending brand awareness.

How is this a media room technology? - simple answer: while media rooms enjoy the benefits as a Web presence, there are many aspects of media relationship management that require phiysical distribution of information. Everything from SEC-required investor relations mailings to press kits; it's a physical integration of the media room with the target audience that cannot survive without hard copies of varying types of information.

I was talking to one of DVCO's co-founders (Dee Rambeau) the other day and he mentioned their support of newsletters in the context of Online Media Room Manager, a product for creating, managing, and hosting media rooms. Dee doesn't rule out any infomation distributon models; the reality of of the situation is that it makes sense to mail things from time-to-time - even newsletters. We're now supporting mass markets whose population may be one. ;-)

These discussions tire me and I'm thoroughly amazed that more people haven't questioned the practice of search results manipulation. What does this have to do with media room technology? Nothing, but bear with me - this affects everyone and every company that needs their information to be discoverable.

Google is simply a machine designed to do its best to detect what's relevant based on a few simple words. It tries its best to provide you with what it thinks you are looking for. It does this based on some sophisticated heuristics, many of which are unknown in detail. Search [as an industry] is subject to great manipulation because, like email, the marketing industry has decided it's an arms race. However, there is one thing that can never be changed about discoverability - the value of a network and how information passes through that network.

"Out of curiousity, how long do you think organic SEO is going to be possible?" -- Search Engine Promotion Thread

There are undeniable principles that researchers like Alberto Barabassi (Linked: The New Science of Networks) have uncovered. Network power laws (as Alberto describes them) represent the essence of value in any loosely-coupled information system such as the Internet. To the PhD's at Google, any attempt to ignore these laws will result in a search tool that is less valuable to the greater population of the Internet.

To understand how to achieve organic SEO, you must also understand the basic premise that information objects have value, if, AND ONLY IF they can be found. But to achieve that, and barring any manipulative trickery, the content items must be discrete; they must be easily distinguishable from all other information objects that may or may not be similar. The more discrete any information object is, the more likely it will be found.