When Intra Becomes Extra
By Bret A. Fausett
When CEO Sam Jain arrived at his Costa Mesa, CA-based office on March 8 of this year, he knew he'd face another difficult day at the office. But in March 2001, a difficult day was a normal one. His company, eFront Media, provided managed information technology services for media companies, specializing in developing destination sites reliant on advertising revenue. Its prospects were languishing along with those of the entire ad-based online market.
By all accounts, the company was losing money. Top executives had recently resigned, and the long-term prospects for the dot-com looked bleak. But what else was new? During the first quarter of 2001, you could have written the same about any other Internet company. Mr. Jain certainly was aware that drastic measures were necessary to keep his company moving forward. The company's troubles and what to do about them were routine topics of conversation among Mr. Jain and his senior managers. But Mr. Jain's usual bad day was about to get much worse.
As it turns out, many of those conversations among the eFront executives didn't take place in person, but online. Using the realtime chat software, ICQ, Mr. Jain and his team discussed how to reduce the fees paid to the Webmasters who maintained the company's hosted sites and whether these fee reductions would be a breach of contract. Some of the strategies they contemplated were marginally acceptable at best.
And somehow, on March 8, months of those ICQ chat logs showed up on the Internet. Much of what Mr. Jain and his management team talked about in their almost daily online chats were the ordinary, boring aspects of running a company.
