February 7, 2001
Web Community Rallies
Around Enforcer, 'SI Bob'
By PETER EDMONSTON
WSJ.COM
So long, SI Bob.
Bob Zumbrunnen, well known in cyber
circles for shepherding the often-fractious
stock-discussion boards on Silicon Investor,
was fired Tuesday amid across-the-board
layoffs at the Web site's parent company, InfoSpace Inc.
The ouster of Mr. Zumbrunnen, a 41-year-old computer consultant who
liked to dabble in day trading, was a hot topic on the Silicon Investor
boards. Members expressed near unanimous support for SI Bob, as he is
best known online.
Coming just a week after Silicon Investor's longtime rival, Raging Bull, was
sold for a paltry sum, Mr. Zumbrunnen's departure also provides more
evidence that online investing communities -- which once seemed to
embody the spirit of the Internet -- are now being viewed as albatrosses
by profit-focused managers.
John Graves, director of Internet technology research at SG Cowen
Securities Corp., says he thinks Silicon Investor will be "stripped down,"
with the focus shifting from community-building to the licensing of
discussion-board technology to third parties.
InfoSpace spokesman Steve Stratz said his company won't comment on
individual personnel matters. But he said InfoSpace has no plans to give up
on Silicon Investor. "It's not going away," Mr. Stratz said. "It's definitely
something that's important to us."
Working out of his home near Kansas City, Mo., Mr. Zumbrunnen was
lead moderator for Silicon Investor, one of the Internet's oldest watering
holes for investing enthusiasts. When online, his persona was both
confident and self-effacing, advising Silicon Investor members on proper
etiquette even as he referred to his mid-Western hometown as a place
called "Boogerville." Offline, Mr. Zumbrunnen sports shoulder-length hair
and drives a 1991 Mustang with a license plate that reads "PC GEEK."
At Silicon Investor, he juggled the roles of bouncer, diplomat and traffic
cop, settling disputes between Silicon Investor's members and occasionally
banishing message-posters to the sidelines -- by terminating or suspending
their accounts -- when they refused to adhere to the site's rules against
spamming, personal attacks and copyright infringement.
But this time, it was Mr. Zumbrunnen who
was bounced, along with his boss, Shannon
Callies, he said.
Several other designers and content managers
also were fired, said SG Cowen's Mr. Graves.
InfoSpace said Monday it would lay off 250 employees, or about 21% of
its work force, as it cuts back on its consumer-services divisions. At 4
p.m. Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market, shares of the Bellevue,
Wash.-based company rose $1.34, or 37%, to $5.
"Words currently fail me, but I'll post more later," Mr. Zumbrunnen wrote
on Silicon Investor's discussion boards Tuesday. "I am no longer employed
by Silicon Investor."
By late Wednesday morning, discussion of Bob's ouster occupied the top
spot on Silicon Investor's "Hot Stocktalk" list, beating out a message board
devoted to computer-networking giant Cisco Systems Inc., which rocked
the markets late Tuesday by reporting lower-than-expected earnings.
"We are like a family, a community, a village," says Ilaine Upton, a member
of Silicon Investor who is a lawyer in Fairfax, Va. "And SI Bob is the
village elder." Ms. Upton, who uses the screen name "CobaltBlue," started
a campaign on Silicon Investor's message boards to have SI Bob
reinstated. By late Wednesday morning, the topic had received 280
replies.
"Bob, very sorry to see you go," wrote a message-poster using the screen
name "TIG." "Your departure is another indication the sorry state of SI or
InfoSpace's management."
InfoSpace's Mr. Stratz defended the recent
layoffs as an appropriate response to difficult
market conditions. "With economic changes,
we have to change as well," he said.
Meanwhile, Michael Coddington, InfoSpace's
director of consumer sites, posted a message
around midday Wednesday to Silicon Investor
members, seeking to reassure them that SI isn't going away. "Does
InfoSpace plan to abandon, sell off or shut down SI?" Mr. Coddington
wrote. "The answer is no. SI is an important part of InfoSpace and we are
continuing to enhance the site and the underlying technologies."
But Mr. Zumbrunnen remains skeptical. "InfoSpace is trying to rid
themselves of consumer-related businesses," he says. "And Silicon Investor
is completely a consumer business."
Like other investment-related Web sites, Silicon Investor has seen its
popularity wane along with the Nasdaq Composite Index. In December
2000, users spent an average of 75 minutes a month at Silicon Investor,
down 25% from the heady days in March, according to Internet
measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings.
Mr. Zumbrunnen says there are other reasons for Silicon Investor's
decreased popularity. He says the site, which charges a membership fee of
$60 for six months or $200 for a lifetime account, has suffered from too
many design changes and technical glitches that turned away members,
even as Raging Bull launched new, more attractive features.
In June 2000, Silicon Investor agreed to offer members free, lifetime
memberships to make up for a software error that resulted in the accidental
displaying of members' personal log-in identifications.
But Raging Bull has seen its fortunes sink as well. Founded in 1997 by a
group of college students, Raging Bull was sold last week by CMGI Inc.
to Terra Lycos for a reported $10 million -- well below the $163 million in
AltaVista stock that CMGI originally paid for Raging Bull a year ago.
CMGI said the deal was part of an effort to reduce its exposure to
online-advertising revenue, which has taken a nosedive in recent months.
InfoSpace acquired Silicon Investor as part of last year's acquisition of
Go2Net Inc., a company backed by billionaire Paul Allen that ran
online-gaming site Playsite.com and two Web-search sites.
With Wall Street clamoring for profits, InfoSpace has decided to focus on
providing other Internet companies and wireless providers with such
services such as Web searching and e-commerce capabilities. Silicon
Investor already has licensing deals to provide stock-chat technology to
Bloomberg, Forbes and TheStreet.com Inc.
SI Bob, for his part, is upbeat about the prospects for stock-discussion
sites. He says he has already been "inundated" with requests to launch a
new stock-chat site elsewhere on the Web. Says Zumbrunnen: "There's
always going to be a need for this."
Write to Peter Edmonston at peter.edmonston@wsj.com |
