Microsoft's Search Talent Power Grab

According to this report Microsoft is continuing its search talent power grab with the focus on Yahoo! alumni. This is interesting for 2 reasons:
1) How is Yahoo! not able to retain these employees or is it that they don't want to?

2) Either the attention is so focused on the relationship between Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are not hearing about the Askers and Googlers defecting or is it Microsoft's strategy to acquire as much knowledge as possible about its possible future Yahoo! acquisition?

Either way Microsoft is acquiring the talent it thinks it needs to gain some ground in search or developing enough corporate espionage to make a valid buy attempt on Yahoo! I think the #2 option is the more likely scenario, but that is my opinion, what is yours.

Skittles Ballsy Homepage Move - UPDATED

UPDATE: So Skittles has already moved away from the Twitter stream it was using as its homepage. Instead it opted for a safer homepage location... its own Facebook page where it can control what is said about its brand. According to Laurie Sullivan over at MediaPost they pulled the feed after pranksters started spamming the list with obscenities. So time of death appears to be sometime on Tuesday. The messages on the Facebook account seem much more product targeted thus I believe that Skittles is monitoring what is going to stay up on their wall and discussion groups. As a test I posted a question about the twitter feed idea to their discussion group. We will see how long that stays up and what response come from their "fan" base. I will keep you updated.


I will have to say this, it is a very risky maneuver by Skittles to have their homepage be a User Generated Content feed. They never know what will come on top. It will be very easy for someone to game the system for their own benefit.

One thing Skittles has going for them is the amount of attention both good and bad they are getting in the twitterverse. I do not follow that many people (currently in the low 100's) but there has been quite of bit of talk about this webpage already. It will be interesting to track how long this will stay up before being gamed. Any predictions, leave a comment with your guess and if you are right you will win my respect (sorry don't have much else to give here, you can have the honor of employing me :) )