Micro Persuasion's Steve Rubel will be leaving CooperKatz and joining Edelman, he writes in his blog: "After five years at CooperKatz, I felt it was time for me to take the next step in my evolution. So I am excited to announce that I will be joining Rick Murray's team at Edelman (the world's largest independent PR firm) on February 27 as a Senior Vice President."

Rubel will continue to blog at MicroPersuasion.com, thanks to an agreement reached between Edelman and CooperKatz. "Edelman will not use the Micro Persuasion name for any service offering. And CooperKatz is renaming the old Micro Persuasion practice Cogence - short for consumer generated intelligence," according to Rubel's post.

At Edelman, Rubel will develop word-of-mouth and social-media campaigns for a consumer-client list that includes Unilever and Microsoft's Xbox, reports AdAge, according to which Technorati lists Micro Persuasion as the top ad blog in terms of authority, with about 9,700 inbound links from about 2,700 sites.