Digital Snippets – how it works

Maggie Fox, January 28 2008

It’s been a week since we announced the Digital Snippets social media release platform and shared the template that explains its functionality. The news spawned quite a bit of discussion online, which is fabulous! We’re really hoping that interested parties will dig into the work that we’ve done and improve upon it further – it’s very early days for all this stuff, and as we have stood on the shoulders of giants in our work, so we hope others will do as well.

I’d like to take this opportunity to deepen the conversation and spark a discussion about functionality and use. It’s been brought to my attention that the best way for me to do this is to get granular and explain the detailed workings of Digital Snippets and just why we (and others) feel it’s so innovative.

1. Existing examples of social media press releases are web-based versions of the standard press release, with additional assets available for richer storytelling (some hosted on a firm’s server, others using YouTube and Flickr, as we have done). In many applications, the channels they’re released on are RSS-enabled so that when new releases are issued, subscribers are automatically notified. However, like a print publication, once the release is issued, it’s finished. There is no ongoing story.

1. That’s the primary difference between Digital Snippets and most existing SMPR formats. Our SMPRs support a company or product narrative – in fact, if you have a one-off announcement, this platform is not appropriate (unless it’s is made in the context of a larger corporate story, see our Ford Year in Review SMPR as an example).

1. Digital Snippets are modular press release platforms that allow companies to tell evolving stories – not static ones that are over the minute they hit the web. A great example is the F-150 SMPR, which was recently updated to include a significant award, and will continue to be updated as the story unfolds and new features are highlighted.

1. The term “Digital Snippets” was the name we gave to the modules within the release. Take a look at the SMPR for the Verve Concept Car, each block of assets is what we refer to as a “Snippet” – each one has its own RSS feed, so that when a new piece of news is issued (and an older one archived) subscribers are automatically notified.

1. In many ways we have cut the cord to the model of the traditional press release. With Digital Snippets you no longer need to issue multiple discrete releases, you merely need to add an update to the existing SMPR on that topic, where it will live in context with all past and future updates, guaranteeing that online content producers have all the assets they require to tell your complete story.

We’d love to spark some productive debate around the functional merits and shortcomings of this latest evolution of the SMPR. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think!