Yahoo! Message Boards And Iomega

To you folks wondering whether that was really me who posted on a certain small cap, streaming media company at Yahoo's (YHOO) stock message boards: There is a both a long and short answer.

The short answer is yes.

The longer answer is a bit more complicated:

A very good friend of mine from grad school ("J") was a fairly big wig at Yahoo! When his stock vested in 1999 (25% up front, 3% per month for the next 3 years), he asked me for advice. The stock was near $200, and I told him to sell it -- every share he possibly could, as soon as it vested. For the most part, he followed that advice.

He did pretty well for himself. J is now the President/COO of another dot com that is privately held, whose service is used by many branded consumer product companies. I suspect they will eventually be bought by another firm much larger than them.

The 2nd factor about the Yahoo message boards has to do with Iomega (IOM). That board was a huge lesson in just how bad Wall Street Research actually can be. It showed how individuals working together via the internet were able to outfox the pros. That, and its one of the few stocks I ever top ticked when liquidating a large position (that's another war story best saved for another time).

Because of J, and IOM, I have always had a special place in my heart for Yahoo!, and the way those message boards were way back in the innocent mid-1990s.

Then the touts, shorts, and spammers took over -- and that was all she wrote . . .

~~~

Back to my post: it was a sincere expression of my disappointment on how they have allowed what was a big asset of theirs to fall into disrepair.

Don't worry: I have no plans on posting anything else anytime soon . . .

Comments

[Ralph F:]

Barry, can you repost here the text of what you left on the Yahoo! message board for those of us who didn't see it?

2007 Sep 04 05:47 PM

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