The services that they offer that are relevant to us are a) a free press release distribution and archiving service, and b) a paid distribution service.

The problem with a) is that they get thousands a day, and even though they are available to all Finnish media, (and may get picked up outside Finland if in other languages), it is a ''Pull' service - meaning media have to actively search the offerings, the offerings do not go on the wire. But that does not mean they are not found. If a journalist is seeking the keyword 'Energy' in the STT archives it will bring up all hits - like google.

The problem with b) is that it is expensive - from 150 € for a limited circulation up to 500 € for mass circulation. This means that they have profiled media customers who only want to have certain types of material 'Pushed' at them. The client may ask eg for only stuff about movies and movie stars if they were a movie magazine.

Both services are paid by subscriptions from the media for their right to browse the archives or get pushed priority releases. Some 50 of these media companies actually own STT.

Neither of these two options seem useful.

However when I was talking with them about Europe-wide Blogs they showed more interest and seemed open to a different take on it. They are sending me some stuff on Monday and I will send my contact our latest pdf so they can see what we produce.

I pointed out that this was a new phenomenon, it is not done for commercial gain, and that there was no budget for paid services of this kind. But it was nevertheless an expert document. They seemed sympathetic.

Finland is not an exclusive place to launch our material, of course, but I would imagine that this test may indicate what might happen elsewhere.

You can't be me, I'm taken