Lee Odden is reporting that PRWeb has been bought by Vocus, a software provider for corporate communications, in a deal worth $28 million.  Odden will be interviewing David McInnis of PRWeb about the deal and will post the interview's contents when it has been conducted.

Chris Knight of EzineArticles.com has released a checklist of ways to convert visitors to subscribers. View the list of 13 tips at EmailUniverse.com.

David Meerman Scott of Web Ink Now is reporting that press release distribution company is auctioning off 400-word SEO'd press releases on eBay. The winning bidder will get to publish one press release on PRNewswire's US1 Newsline. See David's full commentary here.

Jim Kukral over at ReveNews introduces us to theWebLogWire.com. The company is in the press release distribution business like PRWeb, but with an interesting twist: its target media audience is specifically aimed at the blogging community. The company offers releases in text, audio and video formats and distrubutes them via RSS feeds to "have them reach the blogging community in a fast and efficient manner". See Kukral's full commentary here.

The press release distribution company PRWeb has integrated support for SHIFT Communications' social media press release template and introduced a Technorati tagging widget into its submission form. The new user interface enhancements also include a tag suggestion utility to "facilitate the automatic generation of effective tags that match press release content and keyword density", according to the company.

The press release distribution service has announced a new tool to help optimize press releases for the search engines. The internal staff at the company has been using the tool for some time, and has now released it to the public. From the press release: