Thanks to Cheezhead for a great post on the horrendous mismanagement at Monster. It looks like the culture of impropriety that plagued the previous senior management team is continuing unabated with the new team.

Tags: Monster, Options Backdating, Corporate Governance, Weak Corporate Governance, How To Destroy a Decent Company, Great Short Opportunities

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Monday 31 December 2007 |

10. The writers’ strike ends in favor of the writers once the studios recognize that people are watching Funny or Die (Will Ferrell’s

partnership with Sequoia Capital), YouTube, and almost anything on the

web rather Biggest Loser 13, The Bachelor in Helsinki, or The Next Great American Band 3.

9. Apple’s stock hits $265 per share and, despite the initial…

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Friday 4 January 2008 |

Monster paid $61 million in cash for San Francisco-based Affinity Labs, a company that develops vertical-specific online communities such as policelink.com and nursinglink.com. Affinity Labs was founded by Christopher Michel, who had also founded military.com which…

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In an interesting post

yesterday, Dave Morgan (Executive V.P. of Global Advertising Strategy

for AOL) suggests that by disaggregating their businesses and opening

up each component part to operate and even compete independently, daily

newspapers can save themselves from complete oblivion. Clearly, there

is some merit to Morgan’s argument, and some papers (mostly in the

weekly newspaper and alternative… Continue

Edgeio

announced late last week that it was ceasing operations and looking to

liquidate its assets. The company, which had recently raised $6M in

capital ($3M of which came from Intel), tried to build a business by

aggregating classified listings from all over the web. In explaining

the reasons why the business was unsuccessful, CEO Keith Teare stated,

“I would say it came down to lack of vision on the part of investors to

see the platform as part of the… Continue

Monster announced yesterday that it is laying off 15% of its workforce,

or roughly 800 people. The announcement followed the release of their

quarterly financials - Q2 earnings dropped 28% even though revenue was

up 20%. Looks like costs have gotten somewhat out of control. And no

wonder, considering the fact that Monster’s ability to keep visitors

coming to its site has become increasingly difficult and increasingly

costly. Perhaps they’ve gone too far in the… Continue

Thanks to Riveting Rosie for calling out one of the worst web gaffs I’ve seen in a long time. First, the new logo for JobFinderUSA is, as Rosie rightly points out, a total rip-off of LinkedIn,

which by itself is an egregious flaw for any company. Secondly, I’m not

sure… Continue

Jupitermedia Corporation has purchased Mediabistro.com, a site that

originated from the founder organizing cocktail parties and networking

events for media professionals and eventually grew to include

vertical-specific job listings and content. Jupitermedia is paying $23

million for the site which had 600,000 unique visitors last year and

generated revenue from employer listings and premium content

subscription services. Jupitermedia also owns internet.com… Continue

The daily newspaper industry, already in shambles, received more bad news recently with ebay’s U.S. launch of Kijiji. Despite the challenging name, the site is basically an exact replica of Craigslist

which ebay invested $25 million in a few years ago (so much for

amicable strategic corporate investors). With free classified listings

for real estate, cars, jobs, services, and other things, the site will

undoubtedly further erode classified revenue for daily newspapers.…

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With plans to launch its site this summer, Montreal-based Standout Jobs, Inc. announced that it had raised $1.4M in seed financing from Garage Technology Ventures Canada and angel investor Austin Hill. The start-up

promises to change the face of recruiting with a job site that

leverages social media tools…

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In all the articles in the mainstream press trying to educate the masses about what web 2.0 is, almost none include a site solely dedicated to

employment classifieds among their lists of prototypical web 2.0 sites.

A few articles might make reference to LinkedIn, but usually more as a

social networking site than primarily a vehicle to find a job or an

employee.…

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