The PR business in Silicon Valley is getting turned on its head, says a story in yesterday's New York Times' Sunday Business section. It's no longer about nabbing placements with key reporters. It's about getting key "influencers" to spread the word to their oodles of followers.

The piece, "Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley," explores the larger trend through the story of Brew Media Relations' Brooke Hammerling's efforts to get buzz for Wordnik, a new Web site that's a kind of Dictionary 2.0.

In the new world, journalists are no longer necessarily PR's preferred targets. Instead, technologies like Twitter and blogs are putting influencing power in the hands of regular folks and key movers and shakers.

Writes Times San Francisco tech reporter Claire Cain Miller:

"Gone are the days when snaring attention for start-ups in the Valley meant mentions in print and on television, or even spotlights on technology Web sites and blogs....

"In the new world of social media, P.R. people must know hundreds of writers, bloggers and Twitter users instead of having six top reporters on speed dial."

The Wordnik story, after the break.

To wit, Hammerling took the Wordnik story to a handful of language bloggers. She only took it to a single journalist, but more because she hoped he'd tweet about that than because she wanted him to write an article.

Similarly, after connecting Wordnik's creator with Digg CEO Jay Adelson, both Adelson and Digg founder Kevin Rose, who has nearly 800,000 followers, tweeted about it.

The upshot?

Says Miller:

"By 6:30 p.m. on the day Wordnik went live, Brew's staff had calculated that 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 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."