Comments on: Jana Consortium: CNET leadership has “presided over massive value destruction”

By: CBS President Leslie Moonves Drops By CNET HQ

CBS President Leslie Moonves Drops By CNET HQ — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:27:41 +0000

[...] which isn’t a done deal. This was a hurried deal, in reaction to the looming threat from a activist shareholder group with ambitious goals of overhauling the [...]

By: CNET CEO: “This Is An Exciting Day For Us”

CNET CEO: “This Is An Exciting Day For Us” — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:42:13 +0000

[...] CEO Neil Ashe, who has been accused of “presiding over massive value destruction” will go down in history as the guy that was forced [...]

By: CBS To Acquire CNET For $1.8 Billion

CBS To Acquire CNET For $1.8 Billion — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:59:24 +0000

[...] the months-long fight between CNET and the activist investor group led by Jana Partners. Jana had accused CNET’s board and management of “presiding over massive value destruction” and were trying to oust much of the CNET board of [...]

By: Drudge

Drudge — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:09:28 +0000

Jason Calacanis to run CNET, are you out of your mind? That guy to is so not capable of running a 2,500 (?) person, public-traded company. He’s a lounge lizard with some pretty good tech startup skills, but no chance he’s capable of a complicated company of this scale.

By: Victor Caballero

Victor Caballero — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:19:38 +0000

Good story. CNET needs an overhaul. There are lots of good people that work there. The brand is valuable with all the content and domains.

Someone like Jason Calacanis and Mahalo could really make a difference.

-Victor
TJN

By: TJN

TJN — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:17:01 +0000

There is hope in all these brouhaha… they should all give way so that TJN can take over as CEO of CNET.

By: youhippie

youhippie — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:16:30 +0000

CNET have clearly lost their way. What they need is someone at the top who really understands technology, knows where its headed and can shape the company to take advantage of that. But more importantly it needs to be someone who is out there connecting with people and can attract the best people to turn the business around. Of course you need some great business accumen as well. I see guys like Jason Calacanis doing great stuff and cant help but think maybe…just maybe… thats who they should be looking for.

By: Arnstein Larsen

Arnstein Larsen — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:14:30 +0000

You should give CNET to Jason Calacanis. He would run the company well and it would be a brilliant match to Mahalo. /TJN

By: fred

fred — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:02:35 +0000

This is crap! Jana is nothing but a bunch thugs trying to “carjack” CNET. What does Jana do?, what do they produce? Nothing. They are a hedge fund that is only interested in making money. Have you seen the list directors they are proposing? Losers that got fired from other companies that can’t get a real job. And the proposals, garbage. It just shows how little Jana actually understands the business.

This has nothing to do with web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 blah blah. It is about MONEY. Jana bought the stock at $X and wants to sell at $Y and will do and say anything to pump the price up.

By: TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Janaコンソーシアム「CNET経営陣は膨大な価値破壊を統括した」と白書で糾弾

TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Janaコンソーシアム「CNET経営陣は膨大な価値破壊を統括した」と白書で糾弾 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:46:11 +0000

[...] [原文へ] [...]

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:51:32 +0000

Hey Antanu…..Are you kidding me with your comment???

Web 1.0 with little to no user interaction and failed attempts to drive Website traffic is the reason why CNET is failing. Their focus in the 90’s was great, but that style is outdated.

Web2.0 methadologies is what CNET requires to simply drive traffic back to their website…That is how CNET can compete with their competitors who are all killing them right now in terms of growth….

Web2.0 is an overhyped term, i agree, but the core meaning is what all companies need to adopt if they are to survive…

By: Ferodynamics

Ferodynamics — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:30:26 +0000

CNET started out as a cheesy TV show for newbies, that’s been my opinion ever since. If they wanted to be taken seriously they should have started over with a new name. WIRED on the other hand was fascinating to me as a freshman in college, I remember the early magazines, bright orange and metallic silver pages, the writers listened to Electric Ladyland, they told us what was “tired” and what was “wired”, where I first learned about Java back in 1994. That’s about the time I stopped reading Boardwatch and PC Magazine as I lost interest in hardware and BBSs.

By: Narendra

Narendra — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:46:43 +0000

A lot of the whitepaper is factually inaccurate and in some cases false.

For a group touting the social web, it is ironic that the Jana website provides no forum to discuss the whitepaper.

It is very difficult for medium-sized companies to jump move out of their existing state and comparing them to much larger industry leaders is not much user.

Nothing the Jana group would do will have any impact on the growth of the company. It would be even money that the stock would go down.

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:24:59 +0000

Leo - 80+% of CNET is controlled by just 13 stockholders. My guess is they’ve all been well briefed.

By: Noam Bizman

Noam Bizman — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:24:26 +0000

“…Jana wants to replace those two directors, and add five new seats, giving they 7 of 14 directors and voting control of the board…”

I’m assuming you meant 13 directors, not 14.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:20:50 +0000

Is TC pulling another April Fools joke today? Everytime I leave a comment and fill out the website field my comment does not appear. Is there a glitch?

By: Leo

Leo — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:20:17 +0000

That is to the point, I wonder if the shareholders have read this.

By: James

James — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:04:53 +0000

I believe CNET will have to make purchases in order to survive… who actually reads CNET?

They own two VERY VERY valuable web properties possibly worth their market cap, though: GameFaqs and GameSpot… as a person who just left highschool, those sites are very large among the gaming community and attract a boat load of traffic…

By: Phil Yanov

Phil Yanov — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:59:34 +0000

CNET has led the internet in ad types and technology. They had first mover advantage in the tech news space. Quite frankly, if they had been agile and opportunistic, they would be covering internet startups so authoritatively that you would have had trouble getting traction for TechCrunch. I’d be more interested on somone’s take on why it’s going wrong and what it will take to fix it.

By: drew olanoff

drew olanoff — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:57:55 +0000

“consistently underperformed” = “EPIC FAIL”

By: atanu

atanu — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:57:13 +0000

“move from its “Web 1.0″ roots to the modern Internet industry.”?
yeah, all they needed for saving was pile on some ajax, and offer some social networking crap that one uses for 2 days and then even forgets the site name of.
i’m sick of hyping this web 2.0. I’d be happy when all these crappy sites go down under in the next year.
Old business models work, and probably will most of the time. Linking Cnet’s problems to ‘not web 1.0 thinking’ is a symptom of too much of the dubious web 2.0 thinking.