[…] Journalists are no longer considered the only audience for a company's news because in the blogsophere "everyone can be their own journalist," says Todd Defren, a SHIFT principal [and developer of the first social media press release template]. "And a lot more companies are looking to consumer generated content to add to the conversation. The most important aspect is enabling people to have and share conversations about the news."

Defren describes the social media press release as "the democratization of access to content" where participation in the conversation becomes a form of marketing. "Every press release becomes like a blog post so people can track it and come back to it," he says.