Interesting article... I had seen similar stuff from other news agencies on the AOL story. Makes one wonder about the whole concept, at least from the standpoint of an investor.
Chat sites were born out of the old bulletin board communities, before the widespread use of the Internet began. Under the BB "rules", the site owner sponsored the board (in essence), and some of the bigger, better boards charged a small monthly fee to reduce costs, particularly telephone line costs and hardware improvements. The board owners themselves were generally uncompensated, and ran the boards as a labor of love rather than with the intent of prospering from them. Costs were minimal, as was participation. Due to insufficient ports (each point of entry into the BB required a separate telephone line, hence additional costs), users of the BBs often encountered seemingly interminable waits in a sometimes fruitless effort to logon to the BB. This was especially frustrating to gamers, who sometimes had to get up in the middle of the night to determine their game status. (I know. I used to play a game called Trade Wars on more than a few of these BBs.)
On another note, InfoSpace was mentioned today on Cramer's new show on CNBC. The mention was not flattering at all. Cramer was reading from an e-mail attributed to Henry Blodget from several years ago. The context of that portion of the show had to do with the recent Merrill Lynch court case. Mr. Blodget referred to InfoSpace as a PoS stock (or words very similar in meaning to that phrase). This was during a point in time where ML still had a recommendation out on InfoSpace. Taken out of context, Mr. Blodget's remark could be construed as meaning he didn't really like InfoSpace, yet allowed the recommendation to stand, possibly because of an investment banking relationship between Merrill and InfoSpace. (So much for Chinese walls, if that speculation is correct.)
KJC
PS - I'm not presenting the InfoSpace story as being factual. I'm merely relating the tale as it was told on CNBC this evening, or as best as I can remember it. |
