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Fun PR alert -- #Hub140 - @HubSpot Acquires Social Media Marketing Company @oneforty

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Hubspotplusoneforty Yesterday HubSpot, a social media marketing company, acquired oneforty a company that created a directory of social media applications and the social media marketing tool SocialBase.

While the deal is interesting, I thought the press release was fascinating. The entire thing was written like a series of tweets complete with Twitter IDs, hashtags, and "tweet this" links.

Here's the headline of the release (click through to see the text on PR Newswire).

#Hub140 - @HubSpot Acquires Social Media Marketing Company @oneforty - http://bit.ly/Hub140

The release itself was noticed by a bunch of people including Wall Street Journal blogger Zoran Basich who wrote a story called Annals Of PR: HubSpot Buys Oneforty, Says 'Tweet This'

"We get a lot of press releases here at Venture Capital Dispatch, some better than others but nearly all of them following a pretty bland, straightforward formula," Basich wrote. "So when a company or a P.R. firm subverts the dominant paradigm, we try to give credit where due… Think of it as our selfish attempt to encourage a little creativity in a usually humdrum format (and help us avoid that glazed-eyes thing that starts to happen around 3 p.m.)"

In less than 24 hours, the release generated more than 800 tweets and 20 news stories.

While a release like might seem like a gimmick (and it sort of is to be honest), I think it works in this case because both companies are in the social media space and the company acquires is called @oneforty and is focused on Twitter.

I wonder what Todd Defren, the creator of the social media news release would say?

What about you? Does this format work for you?

Disclosure: I am on the board of advisors and am an independent marketer in residence at HubSpot.