When Google launched Chrome, their new browser, last week, they had a lot of fairly complex technical information they wanted to be able to communicate about the new browser. Why were they launching a new browser? How was it better?

Wanting to talk to journalists and bloggers, they had Scott Bourne (a pretty famous comic book artist, if you’re into the comic thing) create their press release as a 39-page comic. It took longer to put together than your average press release.

Actually, the comic got out before launch (apparently this wasn’t supposed to happen, but it didn’t hurt either.)

Twitter, the favourite tool of the bloggerati, has been getting an increasing amount of abuse over the past few months as its downtime has increased dramatically.  Although most the ire has been directed at the lack of communication from the company about what is happening and not at the actual lack of availability:

How many times has Twitter informed you of why it may have been down? I can only count on one hand the number of updates I’ve seen from Twitter about their downtime. Twitter users are up in arms with the lack of communication from Twitter about the service’s problems.

ReadWriteWeb, What’s Killing Twitter?

At the same time, PR companies are being told that we don’t really have a role to play in the shiny new social media world – which strikes me as rather ironic.

Do not pick a PR person, be the spokesperson of the company

The best person to represent the company is not a PR person and even less an external one. It is YOU. You, the founder, you the CEO. Look at Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, they are the PR machines.

Loic Le Meur PR Secrets? Bullshit

Yes, In an ideal world, the CEO of every company might write a blog, and all their own quotes, come up with all their own talking points and really being the face of the company to the press and blogosphere alike.  Unfortunately they are usually too busy running the company and or simply just not that way inclined.

Does this mean if a company can’t communicate directly, transparently and honestly itself, that it just doesn’t bother?

Kami Watson Huyse, APR, principal of My PR Pro, writes about public relations and communications. She has a background in crisis communication and reputation management, executing social media campaigns, conducting focus group research, and media relations. She runs the Communication Overtones blog.

Why did you start blogging?
I started in 2005 having just moved from Washington DC. It wasn’t just a change in place – I found that I’d moved from a vibrant communications culture to a much smaller market.

This was right after the first Iraq war and at this time I started to read Baghdad Burning, the blog direct from the conflict that told the truth about what was going on. All of a sudden, the world opened up again and it really changed my mind about blogging.

I could see that this wasn’t just a personal journal. I realised that blogs really are powerful communications tools. It was both fascinating and amazing to me that I could read the writings of someone in such a different situation from myself in a way which was simply not possible only a few years before.

As this relates to my profession, I’m very aware that two-way conversation just doesn’t scale. But since Baghdad Burning I’ve come to understand how potent blogging is as a scalable communications force.

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