Whole Foods Sock Puppet Sows Wild Oats

[mandy]

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey apparently used to really hate competitor Wild Oats. He'd frequently log on to message boards under the name "rahodeb" and anonymously bash his rival, its locations and its stock value. Lately, though, Mackey appears to have changed his mind -- now he wants to buy Wild Oats. The FTC would rather that not happen. It too now bears the brunt of Mackey's online ire...

Mackey used the blog on his company's Web site recently to bash the FTC. He ridiculed the FTC's reasoning that it needed to stop Whole Foods from eliminating a competitor. If that were the case, he said, the FTC should never permit any mergers because they necessarily remove a rival from the marketplace...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/V4V7wv5k...lans.xhtml

EDIT: related - Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne discusses the Whole Foods sock puppet: http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...0.html#new

[mandy]

More corporate sock puppets.  This time the troll is the wife of Rambus CEO Harold Hughes:

The wife of Rambus CEO Harold Hughes has emerged as the latest message board star. According to a report, Nancy Hughes dished out 170 messages under the alias clarissamehitable on the InvestorVillage site, defending her husband's good name while knocking other members of Rambus's management...

full article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/06/..._ceo_wife/

[rose]

He ridiculed the FTC's reasoning that it needed to stop Whole Foods from eliminating a competitor. If that were the case, he said, the FTC should never permit any mergers because they necessarily remove a rival from the marketplace...

;D