How does the next hot (or cool) tech company or product become one? Until recently, the path often looked like this: Startup hires PR agency. Agency pitches influential journalists. Journalist (hopefully) writes article. Buzz builds, and technology (hopefully) takes off. Pester and repeat as necessary.

Lately, however, some companies are starting to rethink this approach. They’re bypassing (at least to start) traditional media and even PR gatekeepers. Instead, they’re directly targeting key influencers—successful entrepreneurs, VCs, financial analysts, user groups, microbloggers and online forums, among others—who rely heavily on e-mail and social media like Twitter and Facebook to transmit “unfiltered” enthusiasm to masses of trusting followers and friends.

Source: Nick Hayes, Influencer 50 

Cool Kids Get Things Buzzing

This kind of “social influence marketing” could have a big impact not just on media, PR and ad agencies, and their customers, but on technology buyers and watchers as well. Some are good, some not so good. More on that in a bit.

A recent New York Times article, "Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley," shows why this “whisper in the ear” approach to buzz-building is gaining traction in startup circles.

When Wordnik (a new web site) went live last month … Digg’s founder, Kevin Rose, later tweeted to his then 759,310 followers that Wordnik was “truly amazing.”  By 6:30 p.m. on the day Wordnik went live … 1.43 million people had seen tweets about it. CNET and a handful of blogs also wrote about the site. None of the coverage was in print, and most wasn’t by professional journalists.

The publicity sent 40,000 people to Wordnik’s Web site to perform 170,000 searches the following week and caught the attention of reporters at USA Today and The Wall Street Journal who hoped to write articles. A couple of media companies have contacted Wordnik to talk about potential partnerships and mentioned that they read the tweets of Mr. Adelson or Mr. Rose.

Anything that gets such quick results cheaply is bound to gain traction.