What is interesting is with web 2.0, companies are loosing the control of what is published about them. With blogs and forums, people can express themselves about what they think about the products and services.
But I believe Twitter is changing even more the public relationship job. Indeed, public relationship used to be about thinking and taking the time to get the right message at the right time. Twittering is totally the opposite. It must be quick, it must be free of corporate tune, and it must be interracting with people on the web.
Also, PR are not addressing themselves to media anylonger. They must post everything public as the information will be faster to spread via individuals owning blogs, Facebook accounts and other Twitter accounts. Anyone is a media now, and in order to be efficient in spreading the information, traditionnal media are not fast enough.
A crisis could emerge fast in couple of Tweets, as we have seen for example during the riots in Iran. Hence, PR must be as reactive, meaning they must be alerted to what is going on Twitter at anytime, and being able to set up a strong community to react efficiently.
How does old public relationship managers are experiencing this great shift? It seems that these people have been educated and managing their jobs in a way which is not appropriate to nowadays media. They must adapt themselves to a kind of communication they are far to master. Actually, we could expect the community manager position to replace somehow public relationship, or even more precisely, to integrate it.
I'd like to have your feedback on this one.
