Perhaps the most heavily attended panel at South By Southwest, from a PR perspective, was the "Are PR Agencies a Dying Breed?"discussion featuring Erin Portman, Erin Portman PR, Brian Solis, PR 2.0, Karly Hand and Peter Shankman, HARO.

The panel sought to answer the following question: "In a world riddled with ADD, where TMI blogging and DIY reporting are the norm, are PR agencies still relevant?" Admittedly the discussion strayed from this topic and began with yet another debate around tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

After some urging from the crowd, things got a bit more focused. You can view PRNewser's Tweet stream, but here are some of our key takeaways:

Brian Solis: "Agencies have competition from places they never saw coming - interactive agencies, community management companies." This is absolutely true, and to add to that, social media leaders within brands don't always come out of the PR/marketing group but can come from product development, customer service or business development.

Shankman: "Within the next 24-36 months, press releases will be dead - smart agencies realize they have to play in world that anyone can play in." Solis: "Press releases are still relevant. Reporters need background." We agree with Solis on this one. People have been saying the press release will die for years now, yet reporters are still cutting and pasting them into their stories. The key here is that the distribution model has completely changed with new offerings such as PitchEngine and PRWeb allowing you to scale for much cheaper.

The bottom line, said Solis when asked about what will be the business model for PR in the future: "We're not charging to write press releases or for media campaigns anymore," he said. Indeed, those functions will still exist, but they are becoming an increasingly smaller part of the pie.