Marketing Pilgrim

Last year PRLeap added social features to their press releases. Last week they added a new feature called PRTube. It’s like YouTube for press releases. You can embed a viewer to display PRLeap press release on your blog, web site, etc. This is a great addition. I only wish you could resize the viewer – it’s a little big. To embed any press release, click on it and on the right hand side you can get the code.

As I wrote I like PRLeap and with that feature I’d prefer to use them over a comparable service that doesn’t offer a viewer. Several sites have added a viewer that shows a web site under the press release but none that embed the actual press release on your site. No one likes to read press releases (or at least I don’t think they do). But this means no extra clicks and you can skim it right on site.

Lots of interesting buzz surrounding Twitter today.

First, there’s public confirmation that Facebook did indeed attempt to acquire Twitter, but the deal stumbled because it would have been based on Facebook’s valuation–something that no one can seem to agree on.

And apparently Twitter wasn’t bluffing. One of the company’s investors has revealed that Twitter could go it alone, now that it has a business model lined-up.

"We think it’s kind of funny to listen to people [in the press] talk about the lack of a business model," he said. "We know how we’re going to do it, and we’re very confident about how we’re going to do it, and it’s not necessarily in our interest to tell people how we’re going to do it. There is a biz model that has yet to be implemented. Of course, I can’t guarantee it’s going to work."

In a BusinessWeek article takes us on the journey of how one monster of social media tried to swallow an up and comer but didn’t quite have what it takes.

One of Facebook’s directors and largest investors, Peter Thiel, tells the magazine about the apparent misadventures in trying to get a deal done with the folks and Twitter. We know the outcome on this one was a “No deal!” but because all of this was happening last fall during Twitter’s meteoric rise makes it pretty interesting.

This is the first time there has been a public recognition of these talks. Facebook is still looking to expand but Thiel shapes up the attempted union with Twitter as follows

Last week was a rough one for the newspaper industry. The 150 year old Rocky Mountain News of Denver closed shop and New York’s Newsday announced it was starting an online paid model despite the fact that the average person spend just 4 minutes and 25 seconds per month on the their website. Not the best news for the hard print news industry for sure.

Never fear though. Whenever there is bad news there’s always some research done that can put the paddles on a dying industry and this is no different. MediaPost tells of a survey by the Rosen Group that shows that the vast majority of US consumers

….still deem print editions of newspapers and magazines to be “indispensable” sources of news and entertainment.