I know this is extremely stale news by now, but for those who might not have otherwise known about it I think it’s worth posting…
September 1, 2004:
The waves of disappointment directed at Friendster this week illustrate the power of employee-driven community-building using blogs (good) and failing to comprehend and appreciate that power when things don’t work out between employee and employer (bad).
Friendster programmer Joyce Park has been an occassional blogger, writing mostly about programming issues that interested her. The company fired her Monday, she says on her blog, for a few posts about Friendster’s switch to a different programming language. Anyone with a beginner’s knowledge of programming would notice the change on the Friendster site, so it can hardly be deemed proprietary.
But that was the point. Or the lack of it. Park told ZDNet: “I only made three posts about Friendster on my blog before they decided to fire me, and it was all publicly available information. They did not have any policy, didn’t give me any warning, they didn’t ask me to take anything down.” That set off her online community — and by extension, the world of fanatical bloggers, or blogonatics.
One blogger is encouraging people to quit Friendster. News stories sprang up across the Internet. Bloggers howled. A fast-moving chain reaction ensued not just because someone lost a job, but
…excerpt from: Church of the Customer