Employers and colleges are now asking applicants for their Facebook logins and passwords in an attempt to get around privacy settings.
posted by reenum on Mar 6, 2012 - 173 comments

Made in America: small businesses buck the offshoring trend - "For US manufacturing to make sense, factories must make extensive use of automation. That's getting easier, given that the cost of robots with comparable capabilities has decreased precipitously in the past two decades." [more inside]
posted by kliuless on May 20, 2011 - 52 comments

How Britain's largest corporations helped engineer the release of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.
posted by reenum on Apr 28, 2011 - 10 comments

In February, AOL acquired the Huffington Post for $315 million. (Previously) The formation of The Huffington Post Media Group was announced, to integrate content for a new combined, claimed audience of "117 Million Americans and 270 Million Globally." Then, AOL fired 200 US employees (leaving many sites without editorial staff) and began restructuring. Today, they announced that 30 brands, including popular site Slashfood, will be closed or folded into existing Huffington Post sections. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Mar 23, 2011 - 54 comments

What distinguishes great entrepreneurs? "Discussions of entrepreneurial psychology typically focus on creativity, tolerance for risk, and the desire for achievement—enviable traits that, unfortunately, are not very teachable." So Professor Saras D. Sarasvathy (Caution, autoplaying video) of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business created a case study to try to determine how they think, "with the goal of transferring that knowledge to aspiring founders." [more inside]
posted by zarq on Feb 10, 2011 - 10 comments

Over Christmas, Johnson & Johnson decided to stop carrying their popular brand of o.b. tampons. This elicited an immediate and frenzied response from women who used the product. Told that their tampon of choice was permanently discontinued, ladies took to eBay and other outlets to get the last few boxes. In a turnaround, however, J&J is now claiming they were experiencing a "temporary supply interruption". To everyone's relief, the product will soon be back in stores.
posted by reenum on Jan 27, 2011 - 83 comments

Get the Energy Sector off the Dole - Why ending all government subsidies for fuel production will lead to a cleaner energy future—and why Obama has a rare chance to make it happen.
posted by kliuless on Jan 12, 2011 - 42 comments

Home Depot was having an issue with employees cutting their fingers off while sawing wood for customers. Michael Powell invented a safety device that Home Depot then copied without Powell's permission. Today, Powell won a $25 million judgment in federal court. [more inside]
posted by reenum on May 12, 2010 - 141 comments

I asked Nathan Myhrvold, C.E.O. of Intellectual Ventures and widely considered to be one of the smartest people in technology, if he is brilliant. "If you put yourself in that camp, you might be correct," he teased. "But then, you're also an asshole." The Brilliant Issue profiles Porfolio's picks for best game-changers, upstarts, rebels, connectors and other influencers. [more inside]
posted by Non Prosequitur on May 2, 2008 - 10 comments

Selling out is becoming trendy. Last fall, Burt’s Bees was sold to Clorox. It turned out then that former owner Roxanne Quimby bought out co-founder Burt himself in 1999 and sold 80% of the company to AEA Investors in 2004; this was just the final stroke of the pen. [more inside]
posted by bassjump on Jan 17, 2008 - 43 comments

Harlem's commercial and cultural backbone, 125th Street, has been gentrifying fast; many of its Black-owned businesses have been forced out by high rents and replaced by branches of white-owned national chain stores. The street's best-known cultural centers remain (notably the Apollo Theater and the Studio Museum in Harlem), but now, its oldest surviving Black-owned store, The Record Shack, is facing eviction. Owner Shikulu Shange, along with other Harlem residents, will lead a town meeting next week to discuss strategies for keeping Black economic development alive in Harlem and in NYC (as of the 2000 U.S. Census, NYC's five boroughs were home to more than 98,000 of about 129,000 Black-owned businesses in all of New York State).
posted by allterrainbrain on Jul 7, 2007 - 52 comments

Apple Reportedly in Talks to Buy Universal Music!
posted by raaka on Apr 11, 2003 - 28 comments

“There are ethical ways to cut costs, and then there is executive greed. Your comment at the recent shareholder's meeting will be your legacy, like it or not (‘I have to make that much money, I have an expensive wife.’).” –says a disgruntled EDS employee to his CEO, Dick Brown in an internal company memo. FuckedCompany rides the corporation bashing bandwagon and branches out to give you further insight into some of your favorite companies. Subscribers to the mother site get complete access. Non-subscribers can view the free rotating posts. Described in NYTimes (password).
posted by found missing on Jul 29, 2002 - 9 comments

I'll Trade You A Harken for an ImClone. Corporate scandal trading cards, certainly not a limited edition.
posted by owillis on Jul 20, 2002 - 11 comments

"To compile The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s, we used the most narrow and conservative of definitions -- corporations that have pled guilty or no contest to crimes and have been criminally fined." Just brimming with fascinating business lore, including "The FBI estimates that 19,000 Americans are murdered every year. Compare this to the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products...."
posted by fold_and_mutilate on May 31, 2002 - 39 comments

Pass it along : GM buys Chumbawamba song for $70,000. Chumbawamba takes money and gives it to corporate watchdogs that use the money to fund anti-GM ads. All of which makes up for how annoying "Tubthumping" got after awhile.
posted by zedzebedia on Jan 31, 2002 - 32 comments

eek! at+t broadband cable units to be bought by comcast. this means chicago cable service will shift to its third owner in two years (at+t broadband having purchased prime cable just last year, and having just gotten cable modems back online from the excite@home failure two weeks ago). anyone have any clues about the ramifications of this purchase?
posted by patricking on Dec 20, 2001 - 21 comments

So we think we're free? Bill Moyers tells us that we're in the grip of the mega-corporate media who know how to lavishly butter their own bread. And if we like jam? Too bad.
posted by caraig on Apr 22, 2001 - 3 comments

Is the Revolution really over? According to Wired it is, “…one day, the digital revolution was over. The big media companies wrested control of the Internet from the kids in the horned-rimmed glasses.” Derek has his comments on this but to add my own, nothing new and exciting happens anymore.

The Internet has become synonymous for pink slips, mergers, and legal battles.

I know there was a previous link to this article but I was inspired by Derek to bring a different matter to the table.
posted by Brilliantcrank on Oct 24, 2000 - 11 comments