corporate

The Internet can make or break you PR-wise. After a couple of weeks of Monster Mini Golf taking its tale of corporate bullying to the Web, Monster Cable has suddenly responded, at length. “Head Monster” at Monster Cable Noel Lee says Christina and Patrick Vitagliano are using people’s sympathy to further their own agenda, and that Monster Cable does not like suing people.

Alright, my first prediction for 2009: Yahoo gets carved up like a Christmas goose. No more corporate pussyfooting, no more billionaire shouting matches, just the stealthy, calculated approach toward the crippled wheezing of the would-be carrion. Soon it will all be over in a rush of feathers and blood.

Everybody loves a good narrative. That's not to say everybody loves the same type of narrative. Experts in the craft of writing, though, generally agree there is a "worst" kind of story, one they label the agenda story. That's because the narrative is a thin veil for a thesis, one the author is trying to impose upon the reader; the reader would rather come to his own conclusions based on the narrative itself

Yahoo did not take kindly to Carl Icahn's lambasting of its employee in-case-of-Microsoft-acquisition escape hatch. In a letter addressed "Dear Carl," Yahoo's board chairman Roy Bostock, heavy on the dubious adverbs, told Icahn what he could do with his criticism.

The sale of Yahoo to Microsoft isn't going away without a proxy fight. Billionaire Carl Icahn, the guy they made Wall Street movies about in the Eighties and had to invent the phrase "corporate raider" for, is said to have gathered up 50 million shares in Yahoo.

One, among many, things can be said about Google: The company has taken punches from some pretty powerful hitters and has not gone away. The drama that has played out over the years has lived up to its hype and shows no sign of falling curtains. The drama will just get grander actually, as Google encroaches on the territories of more empires.

Twenty-four percent of companies say they currently use Web 2.0 social software and another 8 percent say they will begin using it in the next year, according to a survey from ChangeWave Research.

It has been an interesting week - a few blog posts out there attacking others, a nice article on online reputation that was syndicated from the Seattle Times, and a phone call via Facebook asking me about ... defending your reputation because of blogs.