The Jarvis effect? After the market closed today, Dell said “BOO!” to its shareholders:
“Dell posted preliminary third-quarter earnings below expectations amid weaker sales to U.S. consumers and in Britain….Dell, whose shares fell as much as 5.1 percent in after-hours trade, also said it would take charges of about $450 million in the third quarter for costs of repairing some computer systems for customers…”
Observation: In hindsight, when he blogged his frustration with Dell last summer, Jeff Jarvis was experiencing something that the company is now admitting was taking place on a much broader scale. (However, I guess Forbes would call Dell a “victim” of a blogger attack.) Here, we have an example of a frustrated, then angry, articulate blogger serving as a leading indicator of underlying problems.
