PRWeb is getting faster.

As part of a new set of features to be released starting today and rolled out over the next two weeks, the online press release distributor is now offering priority distribution -- which lets customers upload and distribute their press releases in just 1 hour.

While pricing wasn't finalized when PRWeb briefed me last week, they said it would be about $100 a release and could be used with any distribution. This is an important development, as the next-day and 2-day distributions available previously were simply insufficient when working with clients making last-minute changes.

Other new features include the ability to:

• Specify the time of day a release will be distributed
• Include a release in media digests emailed to reporters every morning (based both on speciality and region)
• Add captions to attached and uploaded images, which improves the ability of search engines to index them

These improvements move PRWeb closer to the traditional release distributors in terms of release timing, and I do think this is critical. News just doesn't fit into the old 24-hour cycle, anymore.