The big question last week amongst PR types seemed to be, Are press releases dead - or should they be? But Robert Scoble is an interesting example of how the more outdated PR practice may be embargoes. (You have to scroll down a little to get to the entry titled Shhh...Don't Tell Anyone.)
For the second time in a week, Robert Scoble, the "official" Microsoft blogger, could not talk about Microsoft products that bloggers around the world were already talking about. How does that make sense?
Steve Rubel writes about the launch of Microsoft's Virtual Earth:
It should be interesting to see which outlet breaks the story in the press. However, by soft launching it over the weekend, Microsoft put Virtual Earth (which rocks by the way) out there for all of us to blog about, basically jeopardizing any embargo that may exist.
Obviously, Microsoft launched the site on Saturday but has an embargo in effect until Monday a.m.
Scoble writes:
I was asked to hold off until 9:01 p.m. PT tonight on the Virtual Earth stuff. A few people discovered our URL's while we turned on the servers to perform performance tests and now we're off to the races. Tons of blogs are talking.
Scoble recognizes the initial purpose of the embargo was to give everyone the same shot out of the gate, but concludes, "The word-of-mouth network is just getting too efficient to try to live by these rules anymore."
What do you think?
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