When the Toronto Star published an article several weeks back announcing that roughly 700,000 Facebook users belong to the Toronto city network, my phone rang off the hook from clients asking what their Facebook strategy will be.
SEP has been working with Social Media, at a variety of levels, for some time, so the announcement that General Motors Europe is launching a "social media newsroom" caught my attention.
Essentially, GM Europe's new website will allow downloads of its photography from Flikr, a link to their video collection in YouTube and news to be "republished, commented on, shared and tagged by a large community where the boundaries between news provider and news consumer continue to blur," it said in a statement.
Each future press release will have "links for easy sharing and tagging with popular social media sites such as Technorati, Digg, del.icio.us and Facebook, and each includes a comments area to encourage commentary and opinion from readers."
"Everyone is learning about the value of the social media environment which allows open dialogue, sharing select information with other users and post photos or information to share with friends or select users. Today, there is much more of an opportunity to create a dialogue with the consumer and we are providing our news in a form that makes it easy to republish, comment on and pass along", said Julie Hamp, vice president Communications for GM Europe.
GM Europe has created a powerful online tool that takes the business of social networking to a new level, engaging a larger audience interested in all things automotive.
Within 2-5 years, I'll predict this social media newsroom will be the Corporate Standard for all industries!