Right now the battle (such as it is) in the PR world is between the “Social Media Release” and the boring, text-only, narrative and puffed-up “Traditional News Release.”

It’s the wrong battle to obsess over.

First off, the Social Media Release will win-out over the Traditional version.  I’m not just saying that cuz I invented the Social Media Release, it’s simply a matter of evolution. 

As the multimedia Web and Social Media grow in importance, the SMR format will become more popular.  And with a recent Nielsen study suggesting that Social Media is a bigger driver of Web traffic than EMAIL or SEARCH — well, c’mon.  The SMR will eventually win out.

Still, there are other dynamics at work.  I foresee a fork in the road of the News Release’s evolution.

Down one path?  The SMR.  Services like Pitchengine are doing a superior job of atomizing the press release elements so that readers can find, use and share them (or bits of them, e.g., the “twitpitch”) just as they like.  Meanwhile, my personal programming hero Shannon Whitley is continuing his promising work with th