LOS ANGELES: Ipressroom is now offering its clients the opportunity to distribute targeted news and real simple syndication (RSS) feeds on their own.
The new offering is intended as a direct challenge to the newswires.
COO Chris Bechtel said giving a company the tools to syndicate news on its own can help it become more visible on search-engine results, making it more likely to be picked up by the media.
"Very few journalists write stories from newswires," he said. "The wire services are behind the times."
While Bechtel acknowledges that iPressroom's upgraded offerings won't diminish the role of the wires for public companies that rely on them for disclosure, he said that private companies could only benefit from having the ability to syndicate their own news.
"Content aggregators are constantly looking for news," said Bechtel. "This levels the playing field."
Some of the other upgraded features of iPressroom's product offerings include a blog module, which allows companies to set up and manage blogs; an extranet service that provides selective disclosure, enabling companies to password-protect their media rooms to allow only journalists or analysts to enter; and an e-commerce service that allows companies to charge visitors a fee.
