Yesterday it was announced that online retailing giant Amazon has agreed to buy funky online shoe retailer Zappos.com in a stock swap believed to be worth in the region of $900 million.  These sorts of deals, although obviously very large, are fairly common place so why raise this one here? 

Well, what was interesting was the manner that the two companies chose to break the news to their stakeholders, customers, investors, employees and the media.  Rather than focussing on traditional media relations, they chose to use social media techniques instead.  Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bazos, posted a lengthy but watchable video to Youtube.

And Zappos' CEO, Tony Hsieh broke the news to his staff via an email and then to the outside world on his company blog.  I had the pleasure of seeing Tony speak at the Word of Mouth Marketing Summit last year and his enthusiasm for the importance of customer service was completely infectious.  His Zappos company culture book, personally signed, is full of great tips and has been devoured by myself and my colleagues at Metrica.

On the day the deal was announced, Amazon and Bezos in particular, were very difficult to pin down by the media for comment and clarification of details beyond this as evidenced by Techcrunch's take on the deal.  They preferred instead to let the social networks do the talking...

This novel approach to communications was bound to raise heckles in some quarters but it does pose some interesting thoughts for the future of communications and PR.  Amazon, with its direct sales model and Zappos with it's customer first approach are the perfect companies to make such a significant announcement via social media direct to their customers.  What place the media in this new world?  And what place PR?

Final thought: if you have watched the video through - would you agree with my old friend Jason Pontin's (nine year old) view of Bezos as a 'chuckling maniac'? Or is Bezos having the last laugh on us as his company goes from strength to strength? You decide.