There is a big fuss going on in the education world at the moment about a company called Blackboard acquiring its rival called Angel. There is a lot of commentary and mud-slinging going, so I'll leave it to you to dive into the controversy. In a nutshell, summarized by the Chronicle of Higher Education, the problem is that Blackboard produces (apparently) rubbish software and has horrible customer support. Angel (apparently), lives up to its name in that it provided access to source code, super-fast responsiveness and generally angelic customer support.

While this fiasco is being fought out, I'd like to take marketing lens to this. Blackboard and Angel held a meeting in Chicago to engage the uproar (+1 brownie points on this count), and I'd like to point out something subtle, yet very important, in this story. Quoting the Chronicle:

To show their preference for Angel and dislike for Blackboard, some wore blue and black ribbons — the colors of Angel's logo — to the Chicago meeting.

Tell me, how many of your users are willing to wear your colors? How many people are cheering for you just as they would cheer a sports team?

I find this as an awesome example of a company creating passionate users and a *community* around its product, and that to me speaks about just how good Angel's customer interactions are/were. It users are fighting for its independence. If your business was about to assimilated by another much larger and hated company, would your users care enough to fight or just move on? What can you about it now?