Text of WSJ article about "SI Bob." (Including (ironically) -- mention of SI Bob occasionally needing to terminate certain SI members due to their copyright violations (!))
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
Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
