Wired on Arrogancegreenspun.com : LUSENET : Corporate Suckup Forum : One Thread |
Wired provides a new dimension to the word arrogance ... From the looks of it, Roberta Jacobs, a consultant for Wired Ventures, is a hard woman to please.... Wired for Action``We, like hundreds of companies within this area, are moving to the next level. We're in a barbarians to bureaucrats transition.'' -- Louis Rossetto -- Wired Won't Unravel, CEO Says, by Jon Swartz, SF Chronicle, December 5, 1997 7
Meanwhile, hard by South Park, Wired magazine is gearing up for its February relaunch, code-named Wired 2.5 because, the executive suite decided, the release of every 2.0 version of most anything has just basically sucked. The slogan for the relaunch is "From Revolutionary to Authority." --DogBites
The Voice of the Digital Revolution has been sounding muffled lately -- unless you listen to its friendly translators, who say its troops are reorganized and finally ready to conquer the world. Unfortunately, fiscal and managerial reality suggests otherwise. --Wired Frays By Steve Boland
--Wired's Noisy Signal ...
-- richard (zpub@sirius.com), December 12, 1997
101 Ways to Save Wired Ventures
-- rp (zpub@sirius.com), January 16, 1998.
An anonymous tipster heard of my curiosity and forwarded me an internal E-mail in which Wired Digital senior vice president of marketing Hunter Madsen tried to explain to Wired employees why the policy was being violated. The E-mail was apparently intended to ease some internal concerns about violating the line between editorial church and advertising state. The missive, which Cohen said was written just before Christmas, read in part:"Here's the deal: For a $100 CPM, we have agreed to send out a spam to as many live names on our E-mail lists (primarily, HotWired members) as we can find -- up to about 500,000 or $50,000 -- during the week of 1/5, on behalf of Wit Capital. Wit wants to (a) stimulate general interest in its services among Wired Dig. readers, (b) stir specific interest in an upcoming IPO offering it is handling, and (c) include an embedded URL in the spam, linking to Wit. The spam must contain info that addresses both goals. To accomplish (a), Wit will confirm ... some kind of special offer to Wired readers, such as a month of free trading with Wit, for Wired readers who subscribe at this time. And the spam will stimulate interest in (b) as the immediate call to action.
"To mollify the Wired spamees, your spam should start by explaining to its recipients that Wired is constantly looking for special advantages that it can confer to its members/readers, and that the Wit opportunity is one of them ... hence, this spam. Obviously, at the bottom of the E-mail we must include an unsubscribe if the recipient does not wish to receive additional such offers in the future."
The problem is "(b)." The SEC has a policy against hyping an upcoming offering from the day it is announced until 25 days after it debuts on the market. The IPO Wit was underwriting, Mercury Computer Systems, debuted on Jan. 27. The offer in the spam is valid beginning Feb. 1. It was that IPO that Madsen specifically expressed a desire to "stir specific interest" in the internal E-mail.
-- Brooke Shelby Biggs's: Net Effects @sfbg
-- (foo@bar.com), January 28, 1998.