PaidContent has the scoop on the possible acquisition of PR Newswire. A LOT of consolidation and innovation is going on in the PR software space. This would be an interesting move, and hopefully stirs further interest in the space. The potential acquirer is a Private Equity group Apax. If you’re a PR or Technology Professional, I’d keep a watch on this.

Original Story: Media group to release grip on PR Newswire

Update: Discussion on TechMeme

[tags] paidcontent, rafat ali, web 2.0, pr newswire, publictivity, software, apax, united business media, pr software, newswire [/tags]

David Sifry announced Technorati Links Counts, a Real Time Link Counter For Blog Posts. I’ll install it after I get back from being on the road tonight. Technorati continues to innovate and I love it. If you’re a PR professional, and not glued to technorati, something is wrong. This is great for stat junkies as well. If you need help installing it, contact me, and I’ll gladly try to help. Hats off to Technorati on this one.
PS- Digg David’s Post about the new innovation here. Let’s get the word out about this!

[tags] technorati, david sifry, link counter, web 2.0, digg, publictivity [/tags]

The first week of blogging has been tremendous.  I’ve been itching to start the company blog for quite a while.  I truly believe blogging increases a business’ “street cred”, reach, and depth ten fold.  In our first week I’ve already met some great people through the blog, gained a pretty damn good reader base subscribing via RSS, and built up a nice account on Digg.  The best part of it all is: I truly enjoy this.  It’s a great outlet for sharing a lot of knowledge.  I  Love Sharing Knowledge, and talking about things that interest me.  If you’ve been reading, thank you and look for more posts.  As for now, I’m going on the road for a few hours.  Pretty cool post planned for later.

[tags] publictivity, blogging, web 2.0 [/tags]

If you’re an entrepreneur you can understand what I’m saying. We all wear hats, and get involved with things that aren’t in our job description. Some even have 500 hats. Titles are usually a nice general statement for what we do best, not only what we do. The state usually requires someone takes certain titles too. For example, take a look at us. While our developer was busy starting the actual code, I started doing some of the CSS code. Am I a pro designer? No. Does our developer have a head start now? Yes. Cofounders and entrepreneurs have to put egos aside, and do things they don’t want to. The CEO, President, etc. Title exempts you from nothing, it only means a LOT more work. Sometimes it’s amazingly fun. At first we thought, “we’re going to outsource sales”. Well, it would have cost a lot of money we don’t need to spend, and it would have left a lot up to chance. So we got our heads out of our asses and decided that when we launch, we’re going to do the initial sales. Honest truth, it’s kind of like Christmas. Remember being a little kid, and you can’t wait to unwrap the presents? You’re like a madman, trying to see just how good you are. That’s what February is going to be like, Christmas. Another great example of co-founders getting their hands dirty is Dustin Moskovitz from Facebook. He’s now CTO of one of the top sites on he internet,and is only a year or so older than me. When he started Facebook wih Mark Zuckerberg… he learned programming over the weekend. Not sure of the entire story/legend/ myth, but it’s something along those lines. Markus from plenty of fish, is a one guy operation, and coded the entire site from scratch. He makes more than enough money to employ an army of programmers, but he doesn’t. Why? He is a true entrepreneur who gets his hands dirty. Lastly, look at Craig Newmark. He runs a company that is also a top site on the Internet that is probably worth close to a billion dollars. What does he do? CUSTOMER SERVICE ALL DAY LONG. Moral of The Story: If you want to succeed, take the gloves off, and get your hands dirty.

[tags] entrepreneurs, hands dirty, startups, web 2.0, facebook, dustin moskovitz, plentyoffish, markus frind, craigs list, craig newmark, christmas [/tags]

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Eye opening survey of about 10-15 college students on Web 2.0. Notice the response to myspace was: Not anymore, used to,etc. Wow, I thought it was just buzz to sell some papers and get some pageviews that myspace was dying. For all you digerati and industry guys, please watch this video. It was conducted by Mark e Seremet. He was one of the co-founders of Take Two Interactive. He’s working on a new web app Reliqa. His blog is pretty damn cool too.

[yt] web 2.0, college students, mark e seremet, repliqa, surveys, publictivity [/tags]

If you know me well, you know my goal is to exit one or two companies, maybe do the VC thing, but ultimately have enough money to give back and educate about entrepreneurship and technology.  I’m working on volunteering my time to a boys and girls club in Miami to teach kids about technology and entrepreneurship.  If you know of anything like it, that could use my help in Miami pleease let me know. Anyway, when I was about 16, I was part of a program called Presidential Classroom.  It was a week long program that let bright students around the globe engage in a mock united nations debate.  Think about it as Model UN on steroids.  The program also took students around DC, introduced them to other students, and let them listen to guest speakers. I think the same program would be awesome for students in high school interested in entrepreneurship (specifically juniors and seniors).  Let them develop a company over a week, present it, interact with students, get investor feedback,etc.  Have guest speakers, take them on tours of tech companies,etc.  I think this would be an awesome experience.  Just a random thought in my mind.  If anyone knows of something like this, or just wants to shoot around ideas about this, please contact me at: jason [at] publictivity.com.

[tags] presidential classroom, web 2.0, entrepreneurship, publictivity, goals [/tags]

I’ve been meaning to write this for quite a while. Don’t get me wrong, Alexa is pretty cool, except for the fact that it just isn’t accurate or reliable. Some people rely on it as if it were cannon. We’re talking important industry folk, and top notch VCs. Here are a few cases against Alexa, including some pretty real examples:

With theWeblogWire, our internal statistics were better on our lowest alexa day than our highest alexa day. We had more visitors and more pageviews when we had an alexa reach of ten than an alexa reach of 300. Keep in mind, we were dugg and blogged to the walls on the day with a 300 reach. That’s just mindblowing, Alexa was so skewed that a day with a 30th of the reach had more of an impact.

My friend who owns a popular social networking and picture rating site has an alexa reach of 20-40. Not that impressive right? I’ve seen his internal statistics, and he’s doing close to 80 million pageviews per month. That’s right: 80 million. Somehow alexa is giving him a low alexa reach and daily pageviews limit. He also has close to 1 million uniques. I’m going to keep his site and name confidential due to trust.

The great alexa spike of April. Check out this article. All popular Web 2.0 and digerati sites had a HUGE jump in April. We’re talking a doubling of ranking. Basically, because Digg was about to edge Slashdot, a bunch of digg users, installed Alexa.  Therefore, all of the digerati and cool Web 2.0 sites got a huge boost.

Jason Calacanis is also doing an experiment to show how useless Alexa is.  Over the next 10 days, he’s trying to see how much Alexa can be gamed.  Very cool.

Alexa also fails to utilize Firefox and Mac.  Hmm, now that isn’t providing a large margin of error.  The demographic and sites visited by Firefox and Mac Owners is very important.  Cmon, this is ridiculous

How to fix Alexa?

First, check out Compete.com.  They seem to get it quite right. Secondly, petition that they exclude IPs excessively loading a page.  Thirdly, let them include Mac and firefox! What are these fools waiting for.

End Rant

[tags] alexa, web 2.0, gaming alexa, useless, jason calacanis, VC, compete.com, publictivity [/tags]

Hey everyone, it’s a slow day today.  I think we’re all taking today to relax and spend it with our families.  If I haven’t gotten back to one of your emails, don’t worry, I’ll do so today.  I try to make sure to get back to any and all emails within a few days at the MOST.  Getting emails rock btw.  I’ll be posting later on about resources in Florida for entrepreneurship.

[tags] web 2.0, emails, black friday [/tags]

So Fred and Charlie have an interesting post about what we’re thankful for. Basically blog what you’re thankful for and tag it to Delicious as thanksgivinglist. Great idea and im in.  You should try it too. Here we goooo:

• My Family: My mom, brothers, father,etc. It’s been a rough year, but I love them
• My Friends: It was great spending the summer back in NJ/NYC, still able to run a company, and live with my two best friends. These are the guys I’ve known since I was 5.
• Business: I love what I do. Honestly, the past two years have seen some great highs and lows, but I love it. Moving to Florida was a crazy choice, but I might not have become an entrepreneur so young if I hadn’t made the move.
• The Web 2.0 World: Thank you for building an awesome ecosystem. I love contributing and being a part of history.
• Blogging and Media: I’ve learned more than any classroom could ever teach from the blogs and media I consume.  It’s truly amazing what has been built.
• Florida: Sunny, 80 degrees on Monday… enough said.
• Those Who Believe in Us: Frank, Max, David, etc.  Anyone who has hope in this company is truly awesome, thank you.  Those who are about to join us on the ride in the next year  as members of the team, customers, and investors… Thank you.
• My Health: I’m young and in good health… thank God.  I’m finally back into tiptop shape, which was hard, but took time.
• Anything I’m Forgetting: Hard to remember everything, but Thanks to what I forgot.

[tags] thanksgiving, web 2.0, publictivity, thanksgivinglist [/tags]