SEO Blog

Last week I wrote a rather breathless account of how exciting the weekend was going to be. Microsoft was going to initiate extreme hostilities against Yahoo! in its bid to take over the elder search portal. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had imposed a 21-day deadline that expired last Saturday and the world expected immediate and brutally forceful action. Nothing happened. When Sunday morning rolled around I felt somewhat burned…

Given the lack of events last weekend, it’s hard to get all excited about the latest round of news, rumours and innuendo but I get paid to get excited about this sort of thing so here goes…

He’s gonna or he’s not. It’s come down to a the simplest of complex choices for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. An emergency Microsoft Board of Directors meeting held yesterday gave Ballmer the absolute power to make a decision to move forward into hostile territory or retreat to the relative discomfort of his Redmond Washington office. The decision is expected to be announced this weekend, possibly as soon as this afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon, Metamend VP of Marketing, Murray Owen and Reputation Management Specialist, David Howell joined Dave Davies and I on our Webcology show on WebmasterRadio.FM. The topic of the conversation focused on the amazing recovery Metamend made within 48-hours of the fire that destroyed our Canadian head office in Victoria BC.

The show is worth a listen for organizations that have yet to write or implement a disaster management plan. Facing the toughest challenge our 10-year old firm has ever faced, the Metamend team had a well thought-out road map to follow. When the administration put the plan to action early Sunday morning, every one of the staff knew what they had to do and set about doing it.

By Monday morning, we were each working from our home offices with a communications backbone in place and access to our common files reassigned and thus restored. By Tuesday, the team was as close to reclaiming its general working rhythm as possible. Looking back on a Friday morning, it is now possible to see beneficial sides to what could have otherwise been an unmitigated disaster.