Nice Try StarbucksGossip.com

Journalist Jim Romenesko is amassing a vast barista army with which he'll one day conquer the world, or at least Seattle (Seattlest, for one, would like to welcome our new caffeinated overlords). He's doing this through his blog StarbucksGossip.com where he invites Starbucks team members to discuss various Starbucks-related news items with him. At least, that's what he seems to be doing at the site--We know he's infecting them somehow. It's like his own real-life bot-net. A bot-net is a network of computers that have been taken over by a usually malicious individual that then perform normally on the surface, but await orders to mail spam or otherwise attack other computers on the internet. StarbucksGossip baristas are just pushing the shot button until Romenesko gives them the high sign to run wild on our municipal buildings, media outlets and independent cafes. Mark Seattlest's words.

Starbucks is, of course, aware of this nefarious shit and stopped Romenesko from getting a customized Starbucks card with the words "Check out StarbucksGossip.com" on it recently. It seems like the cards get reviewed by a human somewhere in the process and Jim's request was denied. Because we're unwilling to spring the $15 to see if "Check out Seattlest.com" would fly or not we're going to jump to the conclusion that Starbucks is onto Jim and that his site is on the short list of URLs to bong along with StarbucksUnion.org. Shrewd, Starbucks, but you can't halt the revolution.