This week there have been two high-profile media embargos broken causing a firestorm of tweets and finger pointing. The two embargoes included the launch of Gmail’s Priority Inbox feature and Autodesk’s announcement that it will bring AutoCAD to the Mac platform.

With the rise of social media and the 24/7 news cycle, it seems the terms of embargoes are more frequently broken, leaving reporters frustrated and jeopardizing relationships between PR folks and the media. Last night, in response to the broken embargoes this week, founder of GigaOM, Om Malik tweeted that perhaps, “it is time to give the embargo and obeying them the heave-ho.” And Robert Scoble, a prominent blogger shared his distaste for embargoes.

As PR professionals the embargo has offered a wonderful way to share upcoming news with reporters and pre-brief them in advance of publicly disseminating the announcement. This advance notice allows reporters to gather relevant details, coordinate interviews and develop their article for publication at the time the embargo lifts. Embargoes also allow organizations to control when the information is shared publicly and can be particularly useful when a story is complicated or will likely have wide interest from a variety of media.

I will definitely reconsider my use of embargoes in the future but am not ready to say goodbye completely. Share your thoughts, will you use or agree to an embargo moving forward? Have your criteria for offering or agreeing to an embargoed changed in light of these recent incidents? For more information on the topic, check out this post we wrote on exclusives in April 2010.