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May 12, 2008

RBI insider’s blog goes dark: What happened to Divestment Watch?

By Peter Kirwan MM blog

Mmm. A fortnight ago, Business Media Blog pointed to a blog called Divestment Watch, written by the web operations manager of RBI-owned Totaljobs.

According to BMB, it was “written by an insider with a brain thinking about what may happen” to Reed Business Information.

Now, it seems, the blog is down. A forlorn notice at Google-owned Blogger.com records:

Sorry, the blog at divestmentwatch.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.

What ever happened to this promising exercise in user-generated content?

Google’s cache yields a clue. On 2 May, The Ops Mgr noted speculation that directors of Reed Elsevier and RBI were among the 150-200 unique users visiting the site on a daily basis.

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Apparently, the blog had even been discussed in the presence of Reed Elsevier’s bankers (UBS) and consultants (PriceWaterhouse Coopers).

Wrote The Ops Mgr: “It’s nice to know that there are some people interested and hopefully listening.”

We hope The Ops Mgr’s dialogue with management has continued in a similarly bright and breezy fashion. Somehow, though, we doubt it.

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