Thank you for the invite to join the discussion. We have been working independently at PRWeb in this direction for a long time now, mostly because we saw that something need to get done and groups tend to slow things down a bit. I will keep my eyes on the group and jump in whenever I have something that I feel will enhance the discussion or as time permits.

With regard to the patent pending features we felt that it was essential in order to maintain out leadership in this space to protect our IP. As background we started the whole search engine optimized press release movement in the late 90′s and saw how companies tried to play “capture the flag” with our messaging and vision. Because we did not protect our IP in the SEO space we began to see a lot of spammy type services begin to emmerge trying to make SEO plays. Without IP protection we had no way to police this activity on behalf of the industry. I do not yet know how we are going to license some of these features but I imagine it will be agreeable to the community when we do. I am writing this under the burden of a huge headache. I hope this makes sense.

David

David – congratulations for the deal! PRWeb is by far the most advanced newswire in adopting social media features, and I hope you will continue to add new ones. Also, I hope you’ll consider joining us on the New Media Release working group [1].

You said -here and in the interview you made with Fard Johnmar [2]- that some of PRWeb’s innovations, like the use of trackbacks in press releases, but not only, are patented (or patent pending). I was wondering if you could offer more information about that, and on how this might affect the adoption of social media features by other companies (including newswires).

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/newmediarelease
[2] http://tinyurl.com/nob9x

If you’re working with a stable of clients, press releases are the bread and butter of your copywriting practice. And of online press release companies, venerable PRWeb.com is my favourite, and has been for years. I wasn’t sure how I…