Yahoo! Holder Building a Dissident Nation

"When I started posting about Terry Semel last fall, I was surprised at how strongly these [posts] seemed to register with people -- former employees, industry watchers, and just general Yahoo! users. The frustration was palpable," Jackson wrote in an email. "The sense was: this company has so many great assets ...why can't they get it together?"

The frustration is especially acute among current and former Yahoo! employees, many of whom still have stock options tied up in the company and had a front row seat for missteps. One former employee wrote that he or she found it "terribly hard to sit by and watch the current regime at Yahoo! destroy everything I and so many others worked so hard to build," according to Jackson. That employee added that "I still keep in touch with many ex-Yahoos, many of whom are still shareholders, and am willing to coordinate with them as well."

At first glance, Jackson seems an unlikely head of an attempt to pioneer a brazen new way for individual investors to make a dent on the strategy of a major Fortune 500 corporation. Anything but an obscure conspiracy theorist, Jackson heads up a consulting firm that counts major corporations such as General Electric(GE Quote), JPMorgan Chase(JPM Quote), Kraft Foods(KFT Quote) and American Express(AXP Quote) among its clients.

But what motivates Jackson is a sense of frustration with the status quo combined with a sense of what thoughtful corporate governance can accomplish. Most individual investors tend to throw away their votes, Jackson says, while this group has the potential to make a real difference.

"I'm tired of reading passive bloggers, commentators, and market watchers saying that 2007 should be a good year for Yahoo! because expectations are so low and Google(GOOG Quote) can't keep growing at the pace it has over the last three years," he says. "Most people say that it is just easier to take your money out of Yahoo! and place a passive bet on Google. But I think there is more upside out of unlocking the value in Yahoo! than in Google."