I told a gathering of marketing and PR types at an AIIA lunch today that the press release (and the press conference for that matter) was as good as dead.

Ironically, I came across this press release today from a group of Silicon Valley types who are reinventing the press release. Obviously you’d hope that future missives from this group will be disseminated through non-traditional means?

A blog called Inside Google says the search giant’s decision to comply with a court ruling and completely exclude Belgian newspapers from its search results is "Ballsy":

Old, dying media, here’s your lesson for the day: Google doesn’t steal your content, it just points its millions of users at you. That is to your benefit. Don’t blow it next time.

I beg to differ. That’s not ballsy, that’s scary. Hello search engine and (by default) internet business monopoly. Microsoft’s been down this road, and it’s not a pretty one.

Al Gore’s PR machine has hit Australia. He’s in the paper and was on ABC’s Enough Rope last night. He had some good arguments about climate change, and as you might expect, the anti-climate change people are responding in kind.

Debates about CO2 are a worthy discussion. What caught my attention was how the failed US presidential candidate seems to have got his head around social media. A good quote from the Enough Rope transcript.

ANDREW DENTON: How do we break that nexus between corporate interests and the way political decisions are made?

AL GORE: Well, I think that focusing on the role of money in politics is part of it. But I think that it’s really addressing one of the symptoms rather than the cure. I think that the larger challenge is to democratise the dominant medium, and fortunately, there are now new affordable digital video cameras and laptop editing systems, and young people particularly are learning how to use them. I have started a new television network called ‘Current TV’, and it’s on cable and satellite in 30 million homes in the US, and you can get a training course. We give a free training course to anybody in the world on how to make television. Then they stream the TV to us on the Internet, we post it, and let people vote on what they think the most compelling material is. Now, 30 per cent of our programming is made by the viewers. And if individuals in a nation or in a society are empowered to take part in the conversation, the key is having a meritocracy of ideas so that the people who are part of the conversation themselves decide which of the contributions from all these individuals merit more attention rather than less.

Oh, this is great. Every now and then, someone has a brainwave to the effect of "hey, we might be getting carried away with this whole Internet thing." It’s also known as the Web 2.0 bubble story.

Robert Scoble has entered this fray, check out the post here. Choice quotes:

I’m noticing something in the valley. The newer companies are struggling to get noticed. Are struggling to figure out how to get outside the TechCrunch/TailRank/TechMeme/Reddit/Digg/Slashdot/Om/Scoble bubble.

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Web 2.0 is largely funded by advertising. Advertising is an AUDIENCE business. So, when Paul Graham is telling his companies to worry about building audience first, that’s actually a good point of view to take. It’s like building a magazine. If you don’t have any readers you won’t get any advertisers.

Of course, that’s why they also call it the new media business.

Dead 2.0 is all over this story too. And it’s familar stomping ground for Squash (time for you to fire up the blog again Phil?)

Finally, one last cheeky observation. Personally, I’m a big fan of TechCrunch (the spark for this discussion) but I wonder if this is a shark jumping moment. Is TC on track to become The Industry Standard of Web 2.0? ie drinking a shade too much kool aid?