PubSub: Real-Time PR Tool

Roland Tanglao had an interesting post on PubSub, a tool that finds new content as it appears on the Internet. From monitoring newsgroups to over 3 million weblogs, PubSub filters through the noise of the Internet to find useful and relevant content.
PubSub has averted PR problems for savvy organizations using the real-time tool. Bob Wyman notes how a PR professional was able to learn of an information leak through PubSub, and with early information, stay on top of the situation.

As the details of EMC’s purchase of Dantz were being finalized, the PR teams for both companies were hoping to keep the secret until the moment they had decided to make public announcements. Unfortunately, their plans were leaked in an untimely slashdot article. This premature disclosure could have made a real mess of their PR plan if it weren’t for the fact that Guillaume du Gardier, a member of the public relations team in France, was a blogger and had a PubSub subscription to mentions of EMC and Dantz. Because of his subscription, Guillaume — not a regular reader of slashdot — was the first on the EMC/Dantz team to discover the leak when he got the alert from PubSub… Once notified of the leak, the team was able to move quickly to regain control of the situation. Guillaume concludes on his blog that “PR Pro can’t ignore blogging” I think he’s probably also become a dedicated user of PubSub…

Tanglao has also posted a Lazy Person’s Guide to Becoming a NewsMaster, with Part 1 covering using PubSub to track your URL, name and topics, for those wanting to learn more about using this tool.