A few months ago, Business Week ran a cover story on revenge. To summarize the piece: a lot of business people were driven by revenge, but so long as they did not come out and call it as such, it was acceptable in business. That’s a good thing, because even if it were not, people would be driven to inflict a payback of sorts for past misdeeds. Besides, it is healthier (and not criminal) to want to use the corporate playground to strike back at people who have done you wrong.
I’m not really into vengeance and all, if I were, I’d be plotting as we speak to get back at my three former lying partners, who after selling their company to News Corp. basically tried to stab me in the back.
This is ironic, because another man whose company got sold to News Corp., Brad Greenspan, today seems driven to derail Rupert Murdoch’s plans to acquire Dow Jones, venerable publisher of Barron’s and of course, the Wall Street Journal.
In what is arguably the “story that won’t go away” or “the deal that will take forever to close”, the New York Times (who has earlier encouraged the Bancrofts to fend off Murdoch’s $5B offer) runs a story on Greenspan: the thirty-something Internet “whiz kid” who founded eUniverse, the company that became Intermix and built MySpace into what it is today. Well, of course, News Corp. built MySpace into what it is today, having invested quite a bit in technology and monitoring for predators etc. But the seed was indeed planted by Greenspan, who acquired a company called Response Base, whose employees Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson are today widely credited in being MySpace co-founders… He says he tried to emulate Friendster, they say it was their idea.
Who knew, that a 105 publisher of financial news would become the battleground for the bitter dispute between a 30-something new media millionaire and a 70-something old cum new media billionaire.
I’ll be writing later on today/tomorrow on the merits of each man’s plans for WSJ brand.
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