FortiusOne, a provider of information visualization solutions is launching a public version of GeoCommons, a Web site that will enable users to explore, create, and share geographic data and intelligent maps. They recently publicized this new product with a social media release (SMR) distributed through PRWeb. 

Livingston Communications has provided a case study of the SMR, which they report received significant media coverage in both traditional and online media.  The case study is worth a read.

They chose PRWeb because of its ‘hard-core social network tagging and search engine optimization capability,’ but they make several critical points that I would like to address:

1. They state that the SMR was ‘garbled by their quoting technology’ but the quotables feature is one that can very easily be toggled on and off, which would address that issue.  We make sure to provide our users with a high degree of control over the look and feel of their press releases.
2. They mention that the release almost did not make it through our editorial queue.  PRWeb has a set of editorial standards that we have developed to ensure the greatest level of online visibility and pick-up of our releases.  There were certain issues associated with the formatting of the SMR that could have had a deleterious effect on the distribution, and overall visibility of the release.  When our amazing development team managed to figure out a solution to this issue, it was immediately implemented and the release went out smoothly.  Since then, we have reconfigured our editorial standards accordingly to better accommodate those who want to use the SMR formatting for their releases.