Social Media News Release Wins Innovation Award

Online news distribution company, Webitpr, has been named 2007/08 digital innovator of the year at the North East Digital Awards for its introduction of the Social Media News Release (SMNR) – a new kind of press release tailored for the online world.
To my opinion, this is a rational fact. The discussions about the new type of the news releases have been going on and on all over the current blogosphere and not only.
Chief executive of Webitpr, Adam Parker stated that “Everyone working in the PR industry knows that we’re going through a media evolution at the moment, where the barriers to entry are low, multimedia is no longer a premium and a brand is in the hands of the consumer.” More over, I agree to what he said that “It’s obvious that the momentum in the PR industry is shifting this way also and we see a press release aligned with this change in some way, shape or form becoming common place.”
These statements of Adam Parker made me think over the situation of the news release in Latvia, for example. I would say that there ARE various ways of writing a news release, nevertheless, they usually tend to be adapted to the industry and specific audience requirements. This is what I have observed in Latvia. These news releases are serious in a way. I don't aim to manifest that a news release should include more off-peak information. As it was stated on Webitpr blog, the SMNR combines a traditional press release with multimedia content and social media elements from sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and is used as an online tool to allow news content to be easily shared and discussed.

Maybe, the reason why this type of news release is not so popular in Latvia, is because social media sites mentioned above have not reached the sufficient number of Latvian publics in order to be meaningful, and might seem a bit trivial. More over, the interactive online platforms used as a public relations tool have started to speak volumes only recently in Latvia, so we're in a course of nature yet.