Friday, December 29, 2006

"Blogola" Scandal at Edelman PR

Edelman PR does it again. From the PR firm that helped coin the term "flog". You don't have to be a PR genius to know that giving out Acer laptops loaded with Microsoft Vista as "gifts" to bloggers is going to backfire. So far, the mainstream media hasn't picked up this story, but will in the coming days. Let's hope that 2007 sees an end to these unethical practices, and Edelman's involvement in the Blogosphere.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Bayonne

Boraie Development and the New Urbanism

Boraie Development, a major NJ based Real Estate development firm and Bruni PR client, has won approval to redevelop the Bayonne Ocean Terminal area, a $900 million project involving a new hotel, condos and a retail complex. In essence, Boraie and several other RE firms chosen, will be reshaping the look of this industrial town, often featured in the "Sopranos". The Newark Star Ledger recently did a profile of Boraie, engineered by Bruni PR.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

New York Tech Meetup Xmas Party

The NY Tech Meetup Christmas event this week featured several new startups that will surely succeed. Urbis.com, founded by Steve Spurgat, allows writers, publishers and critics to hookup in an almost social media like format. Cogmap.com promises to disintermediate list brokers. And, uplayme.com offers music play list swapping. It's almost like 1997 in the reborn Silicon Alley, with VCs and key players showing up regularly at these events. One of the VCs predicted that the "next billion dollar Net company" will come out of NYC this coming year. As NYers say, "from your mouth to God's ear...." Kudos to Scott H., our NY Meetup tech organizer and impresario.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Gannett Copies NowPublic

Gannett's recent decision to embrace Citizen Journalism puts this trend on the map. As BuzzMachine aptly put it, they "blew up the newspaper". Gannett is copying the crowdsourcing model of a recent Bruni PR client, NowPublic.com, which has the largest news organization on the planet. "Gannett is attempting to grab some of the Internet mojo of blogs, community e-mail groups and other ground-up news sources to bring back readers and fundamentally change the idea of what newspapers have been for more than a century...Elements of Gannett's plan are seen elsewhere.
NowPublic.com, claims of 31,000 citizen reporters in 130 countries who post news, photos and video to the site."
- Frank Ahrens, Washington Post

Monday, October 30, 2006

Business Week covers PSS!

Remember the old Burger King tag, have it your way. Well, the latest trend in search engines is the customized, personal search engine. Business Week put the trend on the map last week with a story on Google's new personal search engine tool. Bruni PR scored a major hit for PSS!, a personal search engine company here in NYC.

"And Google shows no signs of letting up. On Oct. 24, Google unveiled tools to allow users to build and customize their own search engines. In doing so, it moved onto the turf of companies such as Septet Systems, which offers the ability to personalize search engines and share them with others through its "Personal Search Syndication" site (www.pssdir.com). The company sells ads through Google and splits the revenue. "I'm very flattered that they are doing this, because it makes our business model that much more legitimate," says PSS's co-founder Benjamin Epstein, adding that his search engine still has some features Google's does not. "But, yeah, there is always concern that they will just wipe us out."

Monday, October 16, 2006

Reuters/Second Life


The future of PR is here, and it looks like PR pros can now test their story pitches in the virtual world on virtual reporters. From our media contact, Eric Auchard, at Reuters:


By Eric Auchard and Kenneth Li

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Reuters is opening a news bureau in the simulation game Second Life this week, joining a race by corporate name brands to take part in the hottest virtual world on the Internet.

Starting on Wednesday, Reuters plans to begin publishing text, photo and video news from the outside world for Second Life members and news of Second Life for real world readers who visit a Reuters news site at: http://secondlife.reuters.com/

New York Daily News article/StreetEasy

Bruni PR scores a major placement for StreetEasy.com in today's New York Daily News. Here's an excerpt.

Homework on the Web

Real estate information is just a mouse click away

By PHYLLIS FURMAN
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER

Vincent Ngai did his homework.

For Vincent Ngai, hiring a real estate broker wasn't enough.

Ngai, a 34-year-old product manager for a financial services company, was recently searching for a studio apartment to buy on the upper East Side of Manhattan. He stumbled on a New York real estate web site, StreetEasy.com, and started doing some research.

Once Ngai honed in on an apartment he liked, he checked the site to see the listing prices for other units in the same building. He was then able to base his offer on "reliable information," as opposed to strictly using a broker.

"The question is, is a broker working in my best interest?," Ngai said. "This gave me a sense of security. I wasn't in the dark." Want to know about public schools in the neighborhood? Curious about what your neighbor sold his apartment for? How about getting an on-the-spot estimate of what your house is worth?

You could call a broker, but these days more and more people are heading to the Web.

Some 77% of all home buyers first search on the Internet, according to the National Association of Realtors.

New Yorkers are leading the way. Started nine months ago, StreetEasy draws 20,000 visitors a month and is growing 20% a month, though it has yet to score advertisers. Another prominent real estate site with roots here, PropertyShark.com, gets about 8,000 searches a day, up 44% from last year.

"Everyone in New York lives in an expensive box," said StreetEasy CEO Michael Smith. "They are tracking their real estate just like they track their stocks. Am I in the right apartment? Could I sell my place and move? Can I move from Tribeca to Chelsea?"

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Raketu: the new "Skype Killer"

Raketu, a new Bruni PR client, officially launched this week, and received endorsements from Tom Keating, VoIP and Gadgets, and from numerous VoIP/telecom blogs. Information Week, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and others have expressed interest as well. Check out raketu.com, register and get a million free minutes. Call it "Viral PR".

VoIP and Gadgets:

Raketu new P2P VoIP app takes on Skype
September 12, 2006
RaketuIs Raketu the next Skype killer? Raketu today launched a new VoIP client that also offers information and entertainment services. Raketu’s communications features include dialout calling (rakOut) to landline/mobile phones, Instant Messaging (supporting Raketu, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, ICQ, Google and Skype), SMS-text messaging, and file transfers/sharing.

Raketu's information features include news, sports, weather, stock feeds, and an advanced internet and travel searching facility. Raketu’s entertainment features include a podcast reader/player, games, and a full featured multi-media player with karaoke. Raketu supports click-to-call, click-to-im, click-to-sms, global online presence, and enhanced social networking features. I even noticed the software supports plugins, including games such as the classic Battleships game. I guess this would be Web 2.0 meets VoIP 2.0. Still missing some of my "cool" features for the perfect unified communications client.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

New York Post/StreetEasy.com

Bruni PR scored a major placement this week in the New York Post on behalf of StreetEasy.com, NYC's leading online Real Estate site.

"Home Buying Goes High Tech"

by Katherine Dykstra

September 14, 2006 -- It's only a matter of time before the real-estate community adopts Bluetooth technology to beam specifics - asking price, square footage, etc. - to the cell phones of home-hunting passersby. Until then, here are the next best things:

- Streeteasy.com: Once Streeteasy.com catches on with brokers and is able to beef up its database, the site could be indispensable. Not only are rentals and sales searchable by neighborhood, price range and size, they can be narrowed down by school district and even building style. Find maps, neighborhood profiles, stats on comparable homes in the vicinity and info on price reductions. On the horizon? Video walkthroughs.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

new clients

Bruni PR has two new clients from New York's Silicon Alley:

StreetEasy.com, the NY area's leading online Real Estate site

LinkExperts, a search link broker/exchange

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Andy Young and Edelman

The Andy Young/Wal-Mart/Edelman PR fiasco proves that big PR firms can't control the web any better than they can control those old Media institutions -- the NYT, WSJ, BW, etc.
Check out my oped on this issue on odwyerpr.com, the PR industry's premier newsletter and website.