Edelman Releases Storycrafter - a tool for Social Media Releases
December 5th, 2006 by Chris Heuer
In the good news we have been waiting for department, Edelman today announced the release of Story Crafter, “Web-based software tool for helping companies produce and deploy social media news releases.” With the only other current offering on the market PRX Builder falling below expectations while exceeding the ’splash via flash’ value, this is really welcome news and hopefully signals the beginning of a new wave for 2007. We will have a more in depth review of the tool itself in the coming days as well as an interview with Phil Gomes from Edelman’s Me2Revolution Group.
We also discovered today why we have not heard more from Auburn University’s Robert French on our efforts around the Social Media Release. According to the SMR Edelman put out today “StoryCrafter was extensively beta-tested by Auburn University students studying under Robert French, instructor and technology advisor for the University’s Department of Communication and Journalism.” Robert, further said “StoryCrafter provides a simple, yet complete, format and process for the creation of social media releases. For those new to the process, using StoryCrafter helps you understand the formatting and layout, too. And, the StoryCrafter tool offers all of the options called for in the Social Media Club’s list of key elements for a social media release.”
BTW - this was one of the easiest post’s I have ever written all thanks to the simple to quote format of the Social Media Release.
Pt. II: Yes, I’ve Been Working On The Social Media…
Agreed. And it’s about time folks started re-examining the news release. Glad lots of folks are doing so….
Chris, with all due respect to Edelman (I look forward to checking out their service), I do think you ought to give PRX Builder a completely fresh look. The Flash-driven site of the PRX beta is now completely re-done in Ajax, as you requested soon after its launch.
Also, does Edelman’s effort “compete” with the SMC’s emerging standard? I recall that as a concern for PRX, too, and am too dumb (technology-wise) to see why the issues might be different in this case?
There is room for 2 vendors, that’s for sure. For my money, as an agency guy (and I think I speak for many agency tpes), I am more likely to want to turn to an independent vendor if I need to reach into my wallet.
Having said that, I applaud ALL efforts to move the ball downfield!!!
New info, via Phil Gomes’ blog: StoryCrafter is for Edelman clients ONLY. Chris, how does that change the story? Just curious about your take?
PRweb has a variety of social media release add-ins for those that use their wire service. They’ve actually been hyping this on their website.
Hi,
I am a little perplexed how PRXBuilder has fallen below expectations. Shannon is one of the nicest people I have met online (No, actually the nicest person). He busted his hump to forge ahead with PRX 1.0 to unify what many of us have been trying to accomplish. While Story Crafter sounds like a nice service (for Edelman only?) Where will all of those nifty press releases show up on the WWW once released? Social Media press release distribution is only as good as the network that can support them. Will Edelman be able to get their Story Crafter releases to the masses without them being reduced to just a blob of text on the bulk of the current newswires? That might be what you could call “falling below expectations”.
Respectfully,
Kevin Dill
Kevin - I appreciate your comments and will be replying over the weekend in a more broadly focused Blog post. All I can say now is that it is amazing how a few words can be exploded to such controversy. I don’t know Shannon personally, so I will take you word for him being one of the nicest people you have ever met.
These remarks were not directed at him though, it was at his product - if this is actually the source of this brouhaha I am deeply saddened. What difference does it make how nice someone is when looking at a product, company or service? I fail to see the correlation.
You have some good questions which are part of the broader ecosystem challenge that one company alone can’t solve, but gets to the point of my personal disappointment with the PRX 1.0 approach. Rather than working with us to get the hRelease developed (he obviously has the skills to do so), he chose to develop an entirely new standard. It is not like the direction of the work is fixed and entrenched and needing an alternative. We need one standard at this point so wherever those releases live, they can be accessible by all.
Kevin - are you going to want to support 2 standards, 5 standards, or 1 standard that we can all agree upon?
Looking forward to six months from now when everyone realizes that the press release still has to be (1) worthy of being released in the first place and (2) well written. I don’t think they’re really showing us anything new here, it’s maybe a nice tool for the corporate masses, but for the most part I believe they still think “social media” is the E! Network, or “left wing newspapers” confusing the terminology.
I believe this is a good press release for Edelman to engage their corporate PR clients with new billings who will figure out Social Media 2-3 years after it’s passed them by. Nice tool for corporate level keyword spamming.
Microformats are really small typefaces right? LOL
[…] Le reazioni per la release di StoryCrafter sono state varie. C’è stato chi ne ha sottolineato l’importanza, per il contributo apportato ad una causa comune; chi criticava aspramente l’approccio di Edelman, poco corretto nei confronti di tutti coloro che sino a questo momento avevano condiviso apertamente i risultati del loro lavoro sulla SMNR; e chi invece ne sottolineava alcune mancanze dal punto di vista tecnico, come ad esempio il fatto che non vengano rispettati tutti gli standards W3C. […]
[…] I can’t tell for certain, but I suspect Edelman’s version and Social Media Club’s version are different although Chris Heuer welcomes Storycrafter. […]