Bantam Live

Similar to optimizing our last press release  where we inserted trending Google search terms like 'Phish tickets' and 'Kim Kardashian cellulite photos' (for some light-hearted commentary) here's an excerpt from our latest press release issued on the anachronistic "wire service" pertaining to Bantam's being chosen as a winning finalist at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference:

Said John Rourke, CEO of Bantam Networks, "We're honored to be a winning finalist in another industry competition and to maximize publicity I'll obey the instruction of the press release builder tool on this wire service and now insert the keyword 'CRM' a few more times in the copy to improve search engine optimization."  He added, "CRM was, CRM is, CRM will be great."  Mr. Rourke then went on to copy and paste the boilerplate 'About Bantam' words below and prepared to go out to eat at Arturo's Pizza in New York's Greenwich Village. "Pepperoni and CRM,"  he concluded.

Read the June 15th full press release entitled: Web Startup that Merges "Social CRM" with "Real-Time Stream" Functionality Chosen as a Finalist Winner for TechWeb's Enterprise 2.0 Conference

"We're honored to be selected as a finalist," said John Rourke, CEO and co-founder of Bantam Networks. "To optimize the promotion of this announcement I'd also like to say that, in addition to some keywords inserted above, ‘Tesla Model S, Kim Kardashian cellulite pictures, and Phish tickets,' as they're trending quite nicely as hot search terms on Google at the moment," he said to himself as he finished writing this press release just before pasting the "about" boilerplate words below.

The irony of issuing a press release over the "wire" services because we were chosen as a finalist winner to the Launch Pad event at none other than the "Web 2.0 Expo" wasn't lost on us. And after spending an hour on BusinessWire.com trying without success to submit our release using their "press release builder" tools, it dawned on me that Business Wire web tools don't work with Firefox - and their website doesn't even mention it. So in the spirit of frustration with the process and the futility of press releases in the age of the Web we added that little post-modern, social media touch above in italics that appears in the third paragraph of the press release that we finally submitted to their "news room" entitled "BantamLive.com Chosen by Web 2.0 Expo Judges as Finalist Winner for Launch Pad 2009."

Update: Of course, not many people caught it, because nobody reads entire press releases as they're full of rote platitudes and banal posturing. But eagle eye credit goes out to industry friend @JesseEngle and Mark Singer of InformationWeek who wrote "the CEO has a very funny sense of humor." ...If only he saw the CEO failing repeatedly in using Firefox to upload content on Business Wire.