Apple dart: Computer company disses SNL

When SNL Financial reached went live in January with the hosting of Apple Computers' investor relations website, it was a much-ballyhooed occasion for the Charlottesville-based firm. Only months later, however, SNL could no longer reap the fruits of the Apple alliance and was instead served a dinner-sized portion of crow.

Faster than you can download the latest Coldplay single to your iPod, Apple took its account to international finance giant Thomson Financial.

"We're not exactly sure why, but we haven't spent time focusing on it," says SNL president Mike Chinn.

According to Chinn, not only did Thomson lure Apple's business away from SNL– Thomson also happens to be the company that lost the Apple account to SNL in the first place.

While Chinn was forthcoming in discussing the loss of Apple's business, the Thomson representatives contacted by The Hook were oddly mum about gaining it back, declining by deadline to disclose any information about the deal or their investor relations web-hosting business in general.

The bad Apple experience doesn't seem to have upset Chinn's cart. He says SNL has signed up 45 new web-hosting clients thus far this year to bring the number to a grand total of 325. Says Chinn, "In terms of all the website hosting, we just had our biggest month yet."

SNL boss Chinn: "It hasn't hurt the rest of the business."
FILE PHOTO BY LAUREN BROOKS

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