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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace (INSP): Where GNET went! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Susan G who wrote (11291)	8/18/1999 3:04:00 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28311

Seems absurd to me.... Indeed!!!

To: Susan G who wrote (11291)	8/18/1999 3:12:00 PM
From: RTev	Respond to of 28311

WHY is there resentment towards gnet for buying SI? Seems absurd to me.... Well it is absurd. It is non-rational and sometimes even irrational, but there seems little doubt that the feeling exists. Read just a sampling of the comments in the petition thread and you'll see some of it. It often crops up in the "Welcome to SI" thread as well. The best analogy I can think of for what's happening is that of a corner bar. But one must imagine a specific kind of place. Let's call it "Jim's corner". It's located in a transitional neighborhood with offices to one side and housing in the other direction. The bar and cafe was opened for the office crowd. It gets a great lunch-time and happy-hour crowd. It even gets a good group throughout the day. But something else happens. Although it was aimed at the business crowd, the bar begins to attract an evening crowd from the surrounding neighborhood. It's a much different crowd from the daytime folks, but it becomes an important part of Jim's business. The evening crowd is more rambunctious, but also more committed. They adopt this little corner bar as their own. They consider it an extension of their homes. Jim, his partners, and his staff are friendly folks, so they encourage that feeling. They respond to suggestions from the evening crowd for changes, and add a few games and other things when the regulars suggest it. A sense of ownership develops among the regulars. It's their place. So Jim sees the neighborhood changing. He sees new bars and cafes open up and down the nearby streets. He realizes that it's a changing neighborhood and sells his bar to a small corporation that also happens to own a new restaurant next door. The regulars are crestfallen. It's as though the spouse sold their living room to someone else. They're convinced that this corporation will never respond to their needs and desires in quite the way Jim and his partners used to. Any change that happens in the bar after the sale is deemed improper by the evening regulars. Any change (especially if they put up a new beer-ad poster) is a sign that the new corporate owners are ignoring the evening regulars.