Technology: Click Here For A Hot Rumor About Your Boss

(2 of 2)

Vault.com takes credit for improving work life at the firms it covers. When employees at the Internet-business-strategies firm Agency.com complained about management last summer, its co-founder responded personally. He assured the online posters that Agency.com takes "the messages posted on these boards very seriously" and that it was committed to employee satisfaction. After the dustup, Agency.com created a new position of "chief people officer." (It says the step was unrelated to the Vault postings.)

But along with the power come potential pitfalls. Lawyers are predicting a glut of "cybersmear" libel lawsuits by targets of malicious online gossip. "Companies are not particularly sensitive about someone standing next to a water cooler and griping about someone else," says Blake Bell, a New York lawyer and editor of a website called CyberSecuritiesLaw. "But these messages go out to so many people that they're very concerned." Although the sites give their posters--who generally use pseudonyms--a feeling of anonymity, they're usually not anonymous at all. Faced with a subpoena, most sites will readily divulge a poster's name to the authorities. And that's something a good off-line work pal would never do.