I can appreciate the entertainment factor, but I don't think the news/PR world is in any way scared. For news, it's more clicks on articles talking about this. Look at how popular these stories are on HN. The news industry loves anything that creates more news.
And Twitter is small enough that I'd be surprised if it's a factor for PR companies in any serious way. I looked at one of the biggest PR companies in my city and they've tweeted twice in six months. PR companies make money from retainers and the bulk of the work is pushing stories out to traditional news, new media (large blogs, etc) and then managing social media accounts. On the last point, they can make more money producing videos for YouTube and videos/photos for Instagram/Facebook than posting largely textual content on Twitter to a tiny audience.
My wife worked in PR for years and is now in comms with a company. That company posts consistently on Instagram/Facebook, as one example, but has only posted on Twitter 2-3 times in 12 months.
And Twitter is small enough that I'd be surprised if it's a factor for PR companies in any serious way. I looked at one of the biggest PR companies in my city and they've tweeted twice in six months. PR companies make money from retainers and the bulk of the work is pushing stories out to traditional news, new media (large blogs, etc) and then managing social media accounts. On the last point, they can make more money producing videos for YouTube and videos/photos for Instagram/Facebook than posting largely textual content on Twitter to a tiny audience.
My wife worked in PR for years and is now in comms with a company. That company posts consistently on Instagram/Facebook, as one example, but has only posted on Twitter 2-3 times in 12 months.