In the extended gaps between posts here, there's been a regular explosion of bloggery in the flackosphere. Flackery in the blogosphere. Floggery in the backosp...

Whatever.

See, I'm not really a flack any more. (SHOCKING REVELATIONS! Full story: p24). After five remarkable years as yer actual senior PR industry exec bloke, I opted to return to my first love: the software industry. So it's fair to say that I'm not really as deeply plugged in to the day-to-day rumblings in the PR business.

Having said that, I'm still fascinated to follow the foibles, failures, and fanfares of my former fellow flacks.

Delighted, for example, to see that Richard Edelman has almost completed his plan to collect a complete matching set of influential flack bloggers. He already had a Guillaume du Gardier, a Phil Gomes, and a Michael Krempasky . Now the limited edition Steve Rubel model has taken up residence on the Edelman mantelpiece.

Reminds me just slightly of the silliness back on Orkut, when the blognoscenti seemed to be competing with each other to "collect the full set" of cool/influential "friends"

All snarking aside, however, this is excellent news for Edelman. They're fast proving themselves to be the smartest and most blog-savvy BigPR firm out there.

I have it on good authority from a close friend that Richard Edelman really does pretty much get it. Top bloke. Now if only I knew what "it" was, I'd be well on my way... somewhere.

Belated congratulations to Steve, and kudos to Edelman for continuing to pay attention to the blogosphere and, even better, working to do something interesting and worthwhile in the space.

This puts Richard Edelman into one of the most exclusive clubs on the planet, btw. The number of genuinely blog-savvy executives who sit at the very highest level in mainstream PR firms is a set of no more than two members, as far as I've been able to tell. Richard is one; Larry Weber is the other. Larry's lunchtime keynote at last December's Syndicate conference was terrific - and empirical proof that he's seen the bloglight. (Hey, Larry! Where's your blog?)