The NY Times, in a glowing piece about Silicon Valley PR woman Brook Hammerling (right), declares, “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.”

The Times says that 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. Ms. Hammerling, the latest example of the omnipresent start-up pitchwoman, is the doyenne of who-you-know PR.”

Ms. Hammerling, at 35 years old one of the ubiquitous presences on the Silicon Valley publicity scene, has navigated these waters for years. In 1999, she got a job at MobShop, a group shopping Web site, where she got a taste of P.R. in boom-time Silicon Valley. She no longer had trouble getting reporters to call her back; instead she had trouble getting them to stop calling.

“I didn’t have to pitch; I just had to pick up the phone and say no,” she recalls. “Everybody wanted you. How do you say no to that when your competition is absolutely saying, ‘Yes, we’ll be in Fortune and on the cover of Fast Company’?”

In the photo, Hammerling has a laugh with Tom Kuhn (left) of the investment bank Allen & Company and Jay Adelson, chief of Digg. (Photo credit: Tina Fineberg for the NY Times)