Brian Solis from FutureWorks, one of the leading evangelists for the social media release, has authored a good primer on the social media release. 

Although Brian doesn’t delve deeply into changing patterns of news consumption on the part of the user, it is implicit in the piece that the social media release acknowledges that the manner in which news and information is consumed is changing:

“Social media releases are designed to get the conversation going, providing readers with the ability to disseminate information and multimedia, bookmark and share the content, and in turn, spark threads. They also serve a purpose of providing new media influencers with the information they need, in one package, in order to write a full story, their way – without having to carve out the BS of a traditional release or pitch.”