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F'd Companies
Everyone who's visited the author's Web site at least once has probably noticed Kaplan's style of writing -- raunchy humor abundantly supplemented with free use of four-letter words, which is then mingled with frequent references to the author's male organ and Internet pr0n industry. Not that the book loses its charm because of it -- F'd Companies would probably make a poor choice for a kid's present, but after getting used to Kaplan's style of writing the obscenities and euphemisms add hilarity to otherwise dry management text. Here's Kaplan's contemplation on the value of domain name Wapit.com (now defunct):
The company had a cool name though. I love to wapit in the morning when I first wake up with my stiffy, wapit in the stall of the men's bathroom at lunchtime, and wapit before I go to sleep.
The book is full of references to defunct companies, and reader can easily skip the chapters if some companies sound more interesting than others. The chapter names are well-chosen and represent the author's style well. "$100 SHOPPING SPREE IF YOU READ THIS CHAPTER" talks about the numerous get-paid-for-browsing-the-Internet companies, the industry that was pioneered by AllAdvantage.com and supported later by numerous copycats. "Portals to nowhere" talks about such huge money-burners as Go.com and QuePasa.com. The chapter for 'miscellaneous' companies that did not fit any other chapter is titled "I've no fucking clue."
If you look for objective analysis, or used to work for some of the companies mentioned in the book, do not buy it if you consider yourself a sensitive person. Kaplan disparaging remarks are what makes this book a worthy read. Here are some of the selected quotes regarding bankrupt dot-coms.
IHarvest.com: "I don't think I've ever seen a more useless company than iHarvest.com. Actually, I am sure of it. Such a waste."
CalendarCentral.com: "Why would an application service provider like CalendarCentral.com, a site that provides shared, online calendars for group scheduling, go out of business? Microsoft Outlook/Exchange you say? [description of business model that never worked follows] Another one assimilated by the Borg... and Microsoft probably didn't even notice."
OnlineChoice.com: "And this one cost investors around $20 million and employed seventy people. Seventy people. This business, this WEBSITE, could have been run by a SCRIPT. Zero employees. Okay, MAYBE a couple of people to broker deals with suppliers."
SwapIt.com: "So let me get this straight: 1) I send them a CD. 2) They give me useless "SwapIt Bucks." 3) They go out of business. 4) I get nothing. Great, sign me up! [...] I believe this is the only dotcom that actually had people SENDING them product and they STILL couldn't stay in business."
Being a Web developer, Kaplan just goes into fits when talking about the high-cost Web site development. He admits that some sites might be more demanding than others, but any 6- or 7- digit number and above, in his opinion, is just plain ridiculous. Talking about Rx.com, Kaplan is blunt: "This company had $350 million to build a fucking website and market it a little. I mean, if they spent $1 million a year, they could have been around for hundred of years without a single sale." In a two-page rant about high-cost developer MarchFirst.com, Kaplan admits: "Anyway, building websites is relatively easy. That's not to say that everyone can do it, nor that anyone would be interested in learning how. [...] Generally, it's not brain surgery (which I'm assuming is kinda tricky). [...] I'm an idiot and even I was able to build a successful small business building websites. Thing is, we didn't charge millions to build a five-minute CGI email form. That's why we're still around." (Kaplan's agency is PK Interactive.)
By now you should get a feel of the book. It's easy to read, and is sometimes just hilarious, as Philip Kaplan has good-quality sarcasm almost in every sentence. The book would be of interest to tech types, especially those who had been involved in dot-com craze. For serious business types it provides valuable lessons on how not to run a new business. Kaplan's book is a valuable addition to the history of the Internet economy.
You can purchase F'd Companies from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
well, finally!
this book is not worth $16
i don't get it
Its seems that most online companies are F'd.... I could have written this book in 1 paragraph =P
Sounds like the /. version of "America's dumbest criminals" Can you really get any insight from one or two pages for each company?
What chapter does VA Software appear in?
Trolling is a art,
y'all shut up now...
Obligitory VA Linux comment?
Trolls, I'm ashamed!
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
I mean there's only so far you can pad out the "do X; ???; Profit" troll.
fd company is pajonet.com
I worked for pnonline.com (psychology services over the web) who spent 6 million in 7 months, then folded. Talk about f'ed.
Wow, way to spell Schadenfreude right! I would have definitely expected to see that spelled wrong on Slashdot. Nice going.
I just heard the sad news on $MEDIA_OUTLET, $SUPERLATIVES Stephen * was found dead in $LOCATION at his $HOME.<P>
$DETAILS<P>
I'm sure everyone in the $COMMUNITY will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy $WORK, there's no denying his contributions to $FIELD.
Truly a $NATIONALITY $SUPERLATIVE.
This template is released under the BSD license.
Can you really get any insight from one or two pages for each company?
what do you want, a binder of fucking case studies? this is Pud we're talking about here. eat shit and choke on it
What's in Chapter 11?
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
All the registars I've tried always say a hyphen must have a alphanumeric on both sides of it, this elimination domains which start or end with a hyphen, or have 2 or more in a row.
Did they think putting-in slashdotted companies?
The Boston Globe gave it a "D".
Here's Salon's review: Looks like a "D" to me.
/me looks at alladvantage bar
1.Pay people in a pyramid scheme for using the web
2.????
3.Profit
Fucked company.com is all about....jealousy. He is such a stupid jerk, i think he was just jealous that all these people were getting excellent training and capital and he wasn't in on it. Often, even very good companies got treated like shit on his site, and often postings indicated this.
He is no different than Howard Stern, etc. Just a shock jock. Now he's got a book and we should buy it?
In line with his site, I've written a nice review oh his book:
"Philip Kaplan's new book must be written by a 2 year old. It is inane and has no bearing on anything of value whatsoever. The man cannot string a single sentence together without expletives, usually about his own genitalia. Makes me wonder if he was even breast fed as a child. Philip, go back to being a jerk, because you sure are not a writer."
That about sums it up. Phil GET A FUCKING LIFE. You will be listed on my site "FUCKEDLIFE.com.
Can't people just be nice anymore?
...picking on companies who aren't around to sue his sorry ass. I think I might buy this.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
to mention all the lame references to his penis and porn... I think a 12yo helped him write it.
isn't this book about a year old now?
but wouldn't it be nice if we didn't need f'd Co? But then who would write the postmortem of f'd Co when they hit the wall and flamed out?
This would probably be a fun read, but I can't imagine "serious business types" gaining any insights. Real business people already know you have to have a good plan and a product to make money. Very few of these failed dotcoms had either one and almost none of them were run by anybody with any business sense. Most of them were a couple of college dropouts with a meager knowledge of web site "design" *cough*slashdot*cough*.
Perhaps the next big industry is examining the .com bubble and the ocean of stupidity it rose in and teaching people not to do it again.
I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic here or not. More's the pity.
I will buy the book, if only for a laugh.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I can't be bothered to buy the book. :-p
Dear Dr. Fuck, The other day, when I was pleasuring my anus with a cactus stem, I accidently cut myself down there and now my dirt box is quite infected. It really hurts when I poop! What should I do? I've been giving myself daily hydrogen peroxide enemas, and although the searing pain is exquisite, my cuts don't really seem to be getting any better. What should I do? Sincerely, Bleeding Rectum in Phoenix, AZ Dear Bleeding Rectum, Cactus stem fetishization has come along way since the "Barrel Cactus Boys" made it famous in the Tijuana of yesteryear. But it's a dangerous world out there, and that's why you should always sand down the cactus needles before sticking them up your ass. Otherwise, you could get rabies, AIDS, or tiny gnomes that live in your pee-pee hole and yank off your ball-hairs while you're trying to sleep. If you have been having unsafe sex with a cactus, I suggest you consult with a physician immediately. Yours, Dr. Fuck
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Get Your Peace On
I've read it. It's amusing. However, Philip Kaplan's writing is flat out the worst part of the book.
/. posters bought into) is deserving of much more thought and research than went into this little one off, quick buck, mindless catalog of failures.
How many times can you read about a company and have the comments boil down to "they were dumb, they went out of business"? That's pretty much the outer limits of Kaplan's critical and analytic skills. The whole dot-com boom & bust phenomena (which so many
The book gets real dull. Fortunately it's short. Kaplan, next time get a ghostwriter. Heck, how about an interview with megalomaniac ESR on his old essay "musings on sudden wealth" now that VA Linux has essentially gone tits up.
to restore confidence?
As a start-up today, one of the biggest hurdles is getting a potential customer to take you seriously.
Even if you are a sensible start-up, funded out of your own pocket - and even profitable on a small scale - you are tarred with the same brush as the multi-million dollar collapses of two years ago.
I have to work very hard to convince a potential customer that i'll still be here in 12 months time, and it takes human intervention - i've not yet figured out how to do it through the website.
New addition for next revision: Mandrake
Yah, I can read the "News of the Weird" in the local alternative newspaper every couple of months or so, but the stories about stupid criminals, odd names, and the curious practices extant in certain foreign nations become tedious in the cumulative. So, ANOTHER person with the middle name "Ray" or "Wayne" is a murderer. That's funny-strange; it's not funny-haha.
How long could one read about f'd companies? Are there really that many interesting archetypes? Don't the stories all blend together over time? Is it that successful companies are all the same, but unsuccessful companies are each f'd in their own individual ways?
I've never worked in the Valley, and I am not a web designer, but it seems that the stories of failure would become pretty monotonous after a while. Three hundred-odd pages? Is there enough sarcasm or cuss-words to make the book interesting for that long?
Heck, I'll buy the thing because I like the web site, but I get the feeling I'd save a couple of sawbucks if I just looked through the archives online.
> Here's Kaplan's contemplation on the value of domain name Wapit.com (now defunct)...
Some of these names are ludicrous arn't they? I remember reading lists of these names copyrighted (or whatever) by "branding" specialists just waiting for some fine 200 year old company to come along for a corporate comb-over.
I specifically remember seeing the name "JamCracker" and thinking, good grief, the picture that paints in my head is just not to be shared!
However, somone ponied up: Jamcracker, Inc. - Managed IT Solutions
I'm sure they're lovely people but suddenly I'm not hungry...
Alright, bring on the "-1 troll" rating, you rascals!!!
(n/t)
When assessing Physics Genius's hastily mounted campaigns, one need not resort to vicious name-calling or opprobrious epithets. One need only present the facts. Wait! Before you dismiss me as irascible, hear me out. We've all heard her yammer and whine about how she's being scapegoated again, the poor dear. Her assistants say that nothing would help society more than for them to cure the evil of discrimination with more discrimination. Sorry, I don't buy that. You can indubitably assume serious trouble is brewing when venal maniacs popularize a genre of music whose graphic lyrics explicitly urge garrulous vagabonds to replicate the most uninformed structures of contemporary life. No joke. So, what am I doing about that? I'm educating. I'm trying to lift our nation from the quicksand of injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. I am not up on the latest gossip. Still, I have heard people say that Physics Genius's idea of libidinous exhibitionism is no political belief. It is a fierce and burning gospel of hatred and intolerance, of murder and destruction, and the unloosing of a subhuman, domineering blood-lust. It is, in every literal sense, a high-handed and pagan religion that incites its worshippers to a scurrilous frenzy and then prompts them to make today's oppressiveness look like grade-school work compared to what she has planned for the future. Certain facts are clear. For instance, if I seem a bit myopic, it's only because I'm trying to communicate with Physics Genius on her own level. Those of us who are still sane, those of us who still have a firm grip on reality, those of us who still suspect that I really reject her demands, have an obligation to do more than just observe what she is doing from a safe distance. We have an obligation to call for proper disciplinary action against her and her operatives. We have an obligation to reinforce what is best in people. And we have an obligation to raise the quality of debate on issues surrounding her abusive words. I would not have thought it possible that Physics Genius assigns blame to everyone but herself, but it's true. When you get right down to it, she likes to excoriate attempts to bring questions of defeatism into the (essentially apolitical) realm of pedagogy in language and writing. Such activity can flourish only in the dark, however. If you drag it into the open, Physics Genius and her intimates will run for cover, like cockroaches in a dirty kitchen when the light is turned on suddenly during the night. That's why we must draw an accurate portrait of Physics Genius's ideological alignment. This letter has gone on far too long, in my opinion, and probably yours as well. So let me end it by saying merely that investigators who have spent many years attempting to penetrate the dark recesses of Physics Genius's doctrinaire underworld frequently conclude that her recommendations remain opaque to many observers who dismiss her on the basis of her self-serving intimations and general lunacy.
Welcome to Whose Line is it Anyway. Where everything is made up, and the points are so worthless they might as well end in "dot com".
Just about fell off the couch when he said that.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Great, so in a few years when my daughter starts reading books that don't have puppies named spot in them she will come to me and ask me why I was stupid enough to move to the bay during the Dot Com boom. Colin
I'm sorry, but if companies are paying millions of dollars for a 5 minute CGI email script, and you decide your web design business is only going to charge a few hundred, then I have a hard time deciding who's the bigger fool here: the dotcom, or Philip "I'm an idiot" Kaplan.
Charge what the market will bear and don't leave money on the table. Sales and Marketing 101.
Here
What a dull book, these aren't interesting failures.
Now WorldCom, Enron, Tyco etc etc.... those are interesting failures.
We all used to think that
Can't
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The weird thing is, although pretty well 100% of the companies with silly business models, excessive amounts of venture capital, and offices with space invaders machines in went bust, quite a lot of imature, talentless 'jounalist' types who'd be dunked in the toilet daily at a real newspaper are still making a living on the web, typing rude words, giggling, and making fun of the few things they can find even less imposing than themselves.
:D
I dunno why I mention this, I just suddenly thought of it for some reason
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
For a while, Slashdot had a spate of duplicate stories, angering many readers who realized that the "editorial staff" wasn't reading their own output. Now there's this rash of outdated book reviews.
When a company starts fucking up on the basics, they're usually doomed.
How do you think they got their funding? Not many college droupouts have access to the kinds of resources that VC firms offered a lot of these lads... So, I think you may be off the mark in how "serious" "serious" business types actually are.
Pud gets his book mentioned on Slashdot with an Amazon referral link! That oughta bring in enough money to keep the FC trolls happy for another month!
When: 1/21/2003
Company: PK Interactive
Severity: 20
Points: 120
(25 comments in the Happy Fun Slashdot Corner!)
F'd Servers
PK Interactive files Chapter 7. Last month, Pud got his book promoted on Slashdot's front page on the advice of his salesweasel who told told him bandwith was gonna be too cheap to meter. His salesnozzle didn't tell him when bandwidth would be too cheap to meter. Evidently, not yet. The bill arrived today.
When: 2/21/2003
Company: PK Interactive
Severity: 100 - new hall of fame inductee!
Points: 220
(69 comments in the Happy Fun Slashdot Corner!)
FuckedCompany.com would smell like peas.
:)
Pud was describing a startup that marketed web based smells. (IE a peripheral device that heated small containers of oil) Real useful. Useful as a CueCat.
A browser would see special smell tags and the appropriate oil(s) smells would be released.
When the user hit say Amazon.com, they could smell musty books. Slashdot users could smell unwashed bodies and trolls.
I always trust a reviewer who equivocates four-letter words, penises, and pr0n with quality sarcasm because he provably still wapits to the lingerie section of the Sears catalog.
Anyhow, F'd Companies was funny maybe in 2000 - 2001. This book is Kaplan's sad attempt to use every last scrap of the buffalo.
I am a virus, put me in your
Um, why is Slashdot reviewing a book that came out in April 2002?
In 2001 FC was a funny read, considering most of us either worked for, or knew people who worked for some of the firms in the book.
Haven't been many flameouts of hugely funded wesellfuckall.com companies lately, so FC has turned into a rather nasty insult site, short on content. The book is nowhere near as fun to read as the site anyway.
So, why a review of a ten month old book?
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
I guess that's what makes Kaplan qualified to author such a book.
My own company (I was an employee, not the owner), back in 2000, was featured on the website, and at the time, had generated the most comments ever. If any of you have a subscription, search the archives for a thread entitled "Amazing Grace." It'll be worth your time, providing a good deal of amusement, that is, until the racist trolls took the thread over.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
butt-boy Scott Ritter was arrested in 2001, after
luring a 16 year old girl to a burger king for
purposes usually only associated with Jon Katz.
This happened 3 months after he was given a warning
when caught by a sting operation, attempting to
meet a 14 year old girl.
No wonder he goes to Baghdad every chance he gets
Now we get to be in the same boat with website design. "Why will it be several months at $150 per hour to make my e-commerce site? I read this book where the guy said he could write a script to do the whole thing."
Just what we need. Someone promoting the idea that testing and security isn't necessary and that writing a script to do something is a zero-time proposition to do once. I wish I knew which companies he advised to work this way ...
At least he says "fuck" a lot which makes it funny.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
This is very true, and it's actually at a higher level of discourse than Philip Kaplan's book is.
Certainly this opinion deserves to be part of the discussion...or is everyone on this site a brainless Pud fanboy?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Example:
Pure genius.
And here you can find "The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business", featuring Steve "Monkeyboy" Ballmer prominently on the first page.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
The dot commers are amazing. I was inspired to look up an old company I use to work for. They employed about 12 people total.
They had three sales people, three support people, on tester, one secretary, three programmers. One of the programmers doubled as their sysadmin. The support staff had to work on bugs for Q&A in their time between calls. Advanced Productivity software literally had clients that were some of the biggest lawfirms around.
They made a product. They sold a product. They made money.
The guys who started the thing took out personal loans to keep it going for awhile. He passed out profits back to the employees when times were good. Honestly, if there was a place to be promoted to or a position open when I was ready to go on I probably would have never left.
Small companies can survive in the IT world. They just have to have half a clue in their heads to do it.
Fill a niche, concetrate and expand along the niche not outside it, keep employee and overhead costs low (their building was nothing grand but I had my own office).
This is basic business stuff that many companies still have no concept of.
ACK
If you want to buy it, amazon has it cheaper.
[Posting AC so I can't be accused of karma whoring.]
Posted by timothy on 01-21-03 10:30
Alex Moskalyuk writes "Philip J. Kaplan's F'd Companies is a compilation of famous and not so well-publicized dot-com flameouts. Most of the companies that are described in the book do not exist today, for some others the domain names are being used for similar businesses, but the original management and business plans are gone. Even though F'd Companies presents several chapters in the table of contents, it's better viewed just as compilation of dot-com mishaps, with about one or two pages dedicated to each company." Read on for more Schadenfreude. F'd Companies
author Philip J. Kaplan
pages 224
publisher Simon & Schuster
rating 8/10
reviewer Alex Moskalyuk
ISBN 0743228626
summary Spectacular dot-com flameouts
Everyone who's visited the author's Web site at least once has probably noticed Kaplan's style of writing -- raunchy humor abundantly supplemented with free use of four-letter words, which is then mingled with frequent references to the author's male organ and Internet pr0n industry. Not that the book loses its charm because of it -- F'd Companies would probably make a poor choice for a kid's present, but after getting used to Kaplan's style of writing the obscenities and euphemisms add hilarity to otherwise dry management text. Here's Kaplan's contemplation on the value of domain name Wapit.com (now defunct):
The company had a cool name though. I love to wapit in the morning when I first wake up with my stiffy, wapit in the stall of the men's bathroom at lunchtime, and wapit before I go to sleep.
The book is full of references to defunct companies, and reader can easily skip the chapters if some companies sound more interesting than others. The chapter names are well-chosen and represent the author's style well. "$100 SHOPPING SPREE IF YOU READ THIS CHAPTER" talks about the numerous get-paid-for-browsing-the-Internet companies, the industry that was pioneered by AllAdvantage.com and supported later by numerous copycats. "Portals to nowhere" talks about such huge money-burners as Go.com and QuePasa.com. The chapter for 'miscellaneous' companies that did not fit any other chapter is titled "I've no fucking clue."
If you look for objective analysis, or used to work for some of the companies mentioned in the book, do not buy it if you consider yourself a sensitive person. Kaplan disparaging remarks are what makes this book a worthy read. Here are some of the selected quotes regarding bankrupt dot-coms.
IHarvest.com: "I don't think I've ever seen a more useless company than iHarvest.com. Actually, I am sure of it. Such a waste."
CalendarCentral.com: "Why would an application service provider like CalendarCentral.com, a site that provides shared, online calendars for group scheduling, go out of business? Microsoft Outlook/Exchange you say? [description of business model that never worked follows] Another one assimilated by the Borg... and Microsoft probably didn't even notice."
OnlineChoice.com: "And this one cost investors around $20 million and employed seventy people. Seventy people. This business, this WEBSITE, could have been run by a SCRIPT. Zero employees. Okay, MAYBE a couple of people to broker deals with suppliers."
SwapIt.com: "So let me get this straight: 1) I send them a CD. 2) They give me useless "SwapIt Bucks." 3) They go out of business. 4) I get nothing. Great, sign me up! [...] I believe this is the only dotcom that actually had people SENDING them product and they STILL couldn't stay in business."
Being a Web developer, Kaplan just goes into fits when talking about the high-cost Web site development. He admits that some sites might be more demanding than others, but any 6- or 7- digit number and above, in his opinion, is just plain ridiculous. Talking about Rx.com, Kaplan is blunt: "This company had $350 million to build a fucking website and market it a little. I mean, if they spent $1 million a year, they could have been around for hundred of years without a single sale." In a two-page rant about high-cost developer MarchFirst.com, Kaplan admits: "Anyway, building websites is relatively easy. That's not to say that everyone can do it, nor that anyone would be interested in learning how. [...] Generally, it's not brain surgery (which I'm assuming is kinda tricky). [...] I'm an idiot and even I was able to build a successful small business building websites. Thing is, we didn't charge millions to build a five-minute CGI email form. That's why we're still around." (Kaplan's agency is PK Interactive.)
By now you should get a feel of the book. It's easy to read, and is sometimes just hilarious, as Philip Kaplan has good-quality sarcasm almost in every sentence. The book would be of interest to tech types, especially those who had been involved in dot-com craze. For serious business types it provides valuable lessons on how not to run a new business. Kaplan's book is a valuable addition to the history of the Internet economy.
This is the same guy that recently had a contest where the people in forum.fuckedcompany.com trolled the craigslist.org personals. He put what he considered the funniest responses online, including one where some peson had responded with their real name, address, and phone number.
The guy also put an "article" on the front page of his site about CmdrTaco masturbating.
90% of that book was written by the users of FC. The only parts Pud wrote were the parts where he was writing about looking at porn, and snorting coke.
In addition to what other posters have said, it takes time.
2 years ago the pendulum had swung so far into the other extreme that a ten year old could get multimillion dollar funding for a modern art made of dog poop 3d scanning through the mail startup.
Now we're on the other end: People have seen so much stupidity and crap and dying dot coms with no business plan that we're at the end where we'll need a lot more to get things through.
In time, the averages will work out. But that doesn't help you much now, does it?
Salon had a great article about the way that names were created (back in 99). The company came up with a name JamCracker that no-one wanted:
It seems that when Altman and Manning presented the name Jamcracker to a client recently, the reception was not everything they had hoped for. "I put the name up in front of their creative people," Manning says. "There were a couple of women sitting in. One of them got up and said, 'Oh, that's disgusting.' Another said, 'This is really sick.' I said, 'Excuse me, what are you talking about?' They said, 'We can't explain it, but that name is just creeping us out. We don't know what it is, but could you take it off the wall, please?'" Manning remains mystified by the incident. "There's apparently some strange, uncomfortable meaning attached to it in the minds of some women," he says. "God knows what that could be."
I was somewhat amused in 2000 when a company started up using that name!
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
What are you kidding me? .com's are the stellar leaders in the innovative digital distribution of adult entertainment worldwide. No nobody can beat them at this game.
What in the living fuck is this shit?
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I don't want to hear anything more about dot.com meltdowns. I *lived* them. The first was a combination ebay and Yahoo-stores: "Build your auction site! Your own categories, your own listings....", the second was an e-drugstore. The e-drugstore blatently *copied* their product descriptions from their competitor's website about 6 months before I joined. When I found that out, I knew it was doomed. Either they would be caught when the grew large enough to warrent the attention of the competitor, or they would stay small and fade. The parent company pulled the plug when the stock market popped and fired the web staff.
Maybe when I am 65 I will want to reminesce about the past and read just a book to travel down Memory Lane. But right now I don't want to hear ANYTHING more about stupid dot.com's and what a gullable shmuck I was. "Stock options" my ass. I did not actively seek such things, I just kind of ended up in the middle of it somewhow in a boil-the-frog-slowly sense. Well, it was kind of fun while it lasted I suppose. It was a roller coaster ride in which the tracks ended abruptly by jutting out in mid-air. Free fall.
Table-ized A.I.
In slashdot's particular case, I happen to think that the design of their backend is rather inefficient (it was a hack and it seems to still be), their frontend could use a lot of work, their moderation system could be improved upon without much added complexity, their editing is just plain horrendous, their bias spills over unnecessarily in many cases, and what little original content that they do produce is unimpressive at best. In short, they're mismanaged and they're missing out on a lot of opportunity. Slashdot, as it stands today and has always been, is nothing more than some hacked together scripts, some hardware, sloppy editing/administration, and a lot of popularity amongst young techies. It could be much better if they were a little smarter and worked a lot harder.
One day when I had nothing better to do, I keyed "free stuff" into a search engine. One of the hits said swapit.com was giving away free T-shirts, so I gave them my address. Not only did they send me a T-shirt, but they also sent me a mailer for my CDs that looked like it cost at least a dollar to buy, ship, handle/process etc. I never did any business with swapit. They could have easily spent $10 to get my business--and I gave them nothing in return. I have no regrets. I still have the T-shirt, and I still wear it. It's a pretty nice piece of swag. It's black with the swapit logo on the front, and a swapit logo on the back upon which is superimposed the slogan "SWAP THE DEAD FOR LIVE". Now that's ironic, isn't it?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's called "Customer Relations" and "Repeat Business". You might want to look into it.
As the old saying goes, just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean you *should*...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Stupidity Surcharge: $10,000,000
Total: $10,000,001
Well, at least the company can write off most of that as an "education" expense... :)
But what did they (claim to) do?
:-P
Wapit.com?
iHarvest.com?
CalendarCentral.com -- I can figure this one out, and the reviewer told us.
OnlineChoice.com? -- What did they do that probably didn't require employees?
SwapIt.com? -- What, you gave them your CDs for credit to buy other people's used CDs? Surprised the RIAA didn't shut them down before they went tits up
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Ha ha ha these companies were stupid and we're so smart... just doesn't seem like a nice attitude.
Lots of "silly" business survive. Who knew at the time.
The book's gotten mixed reviews and not just from people who were the targets. But I'd say the value in F'd Company is the website: if you can get beyond the "I'm the first post you {racial/sexist epithet}XXXX{/racial/sexist epithet} and here's my XXX website" posts, there are some posts that have (apparently) real gossip on these companies. He also links to Internal Memos quite often. Fun to read how other people are getting screwed: there's one there called, kinda recursively, Salacious gossip and internal confidential information posted on a tacky website .
Hey, the guy's gonna try to make cash however he can, and there's a finite amount in internet ad revenue and amateur pr0n.
As one of my lateral posters commented, consultants tend to be anything but "serious business types". I'm not familiar with this particular CEO, but I'd hardly expect him, on the basis of his position with Accenture, to be really familiar with business operations. Also, WebVan "only" managed to raise about 400m. While that's a whole lot of money, it's a far cry short from 1b. You're almost certainly referring to their market capitalization (which at some point exceeded 1b), but that's a very different thing all together.
what i saw at medscape:
1. 75 million/year of investors money blown out the chute.
2. execs hiring their friends. friends who pose as high-end consultants. friends who do not know jack. friends who charge close to $1000/hour !
3. friends who then pay the execs on the backend, on the outside.
4. execs found a way to get that investor money out the door into thier own pockets.
this is one way of many, one of the few i care to explain.
silly company
smart execs have big boats and mistresses now,,,
maybe most dotcoms didn't have real business types in them (maybe) but the banks that loaned them millions did. The VCs that invested in them did. The Stock Brokers than conned people into investing did.
Over-eager entrepenuers [damn that must be spelled wrong] are not totally to blame, just like a kid is a candy store isn't totally to blame when he asks for one of each and his dad says "sure!"
The truth doesn't care what I think.
http://www.dirtcheapdiamonds.com
I just picked mine up from the appraiser's office. I saved a ton of money compared to going retail and got me a great diamond. As far as I can tell it's the owner and 2 employees in a tiny office suite in Maryland. The diamonds are at wholesalers in NYC. These guys just charge an 8% mark up for running a website doing pretty well from what I have heard in the last week.
This is what the internet is really about. Finding ways to sell goods more efficiently. Why pay the retail mark up which includes rent, insurance, security and salaries?
I had a great idea for a company that provided online free-lunches, but just before it took off, it was slashdotted!
This guy has tried umpteen different "get rich off other peoples' content and/or misery" schemes for years. As pure dumb luck would have it, he was in the right place at the right time and got his 15 minutes via F'd Company. I appreciate the site as a clearing house of useful info on what's going on with dot-coms, but he can't keep his dick in his pants, or his feet out of his mouth long enough to focus on what works, without trying to leverage every little tiny bit of attention he can get to promote all the other boneheaded ideas he has. That's the problem - I wouldn't purchase his book because the content is already online, and I don't want to further promote this dork's exploitive, annoyingly stereotypical, tired self-deprecating, brain-cell-depleting sorry excuse for a work ethic.
Can you call this a troll when I'm merely criticizing his motivation for criticizing everyone else's motivation? I agree his observations are valid, but anyone with half a brain could already see that my-buttcheeks.com, with a $20M investment, was probably not a good business move. I claim the same boneheaded lack of good business sense that inflated all the failing dot-coms is the same boneheadedness that gives this dork any increased chance of getting laid off this exploitation.
I think this is a poingnant commentary on the state of our society. He is like the guy who sets up a lemonade stand at the sight of a train wreck to make some money off of rubberneckers, at the same time, booking his horrible band, hawking t-shirts, promoting his public appearance in the bathroom of the nearby Exxon station, and oh yea, publishing a book of photos he's clipped out of newspapers of crash victims. Woo hoo! Three cheers for good ol' American Ingenuity!
Oh, and Mr. Krap-lan, I know you're reading all of this because you're so obsessed with yourself, let me deflate your modus oprandi: Pulling the reverse-psychology BS of calling yourself a dork loser is not going to convince anyone that perhaps, you actually aren't a dork loser. We all know the truth, and we don't need a web site to tell us that. Your 15 minutes are up. Go back to selling upskirt pics and mass e-mailing penis enlargement solicitations.
My ol' company was in there, and for interest to slashdot users, it was an opensourced perl based system.
.com, the preasure to repay investor's money with a lucritive IPO gave too little time to the proper development of the software, too high a credence to marketing the company and the need for some 'star' founders put too little expierence in the management of the company.
.coms back in 99-00 knows, all of that was an impossibility at that time.
The problem with Kaplan's review, is that he really just wrote based on that one sentance explanation. After reading that I put the book down. I presume Kaplan had a list made with name and one sentance discription and he just wrote a blurb based on that. There was no research into each company, I'm not sure by reading that you get any insight into each company's workings and problems. A better book, would be to allow an simpathetic former employee write an obituary, then include some of the comments from his website when the company went under to retort and bring some feeling back into it.
Zelerate died for a number of reasons, the least being the capability of the opensourced model to sustain business. Our problems were basically the same as every other
If we just developed, found patient beta company's to develop for, followed the traditional alpha-beta-production timelines, AND got our heads out of the clouds, we just might be still around. But, as anyone who worked in or around
You need at least a 50" Plasma these days!
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Most of the companies that are described in the book do not exist today, for some others the domain names are being used for similar businesses, but the original management and business plans are gone.
"Business plans?", sorry, run that by me again; since when did a dot.com company have of those??? The ones where I worked used the tried and tested Wing+prayer+blind optimism business model...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
You can't put fuck in a book title? That licks monkey choad. When is society going to grow up and stop being a bunch uptight cunts?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Is Red Hat in F'd Companies part II?
Is Loki in there?
I could go on, but this is getting boring.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
You're right, and yet he makes all the money. I don't know why people read his crap and worship the ground he walks on ... oops! Gotta run and get ready for my American Idol party tonight!
Yes, you are just bitter. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, "It's funny because it's happening to somebody else".
Words to live by, my friend.
F'd company should serve as a very real warning to those out there that still work in companies held over from the "Internet Bubble" era. Apparently funding doesnt mean that your company does anything worth while. Just because your company has 50$ million dollars in funding doesnt mean they're worth 50mil.... it just means they're 50$ mil in debt! How can these companies expect to stay around in this economy if they owe their investors that much money with little to no revenue?? Not to mention pissed off workers.
.... truly f'd!
Just look at the latest batch from today alone! Securify, Marrakech, Crescent Networks
"Breach"
Rumor has it, $50 million later, Securify just layed off around 20% of its workforce. Word is remaining employees get a 10% paycut.
When: 1/21/2003
Company: Securify.com
Severity: 80
Points: 180
Marred
$55 million later, Marrakech axed 30 -- 70 remain.
When: 1/21/2003
Company: Marrakech
Severity: 65
Points: 165
Croissanwich
"We regret to announce that Crescent Networks has ceased operations," says their site, $50 million later.
When: 1/20/2003
Company: Crescent Networks
Severity: 100 - new hall of fame inductee!
Points: 200
Every few weeks I check out Fucked Company for a laugh (and when I was working at such a company, I kept hoping it would appear on the site--I didn't have the guts to submit it myself.) But I'm never amused for long, because the site seems overrun with people who, frankly, seem like good candidates for psychological counselling. There's something a little disquieting about an anonymous geek posting to a public forum on how he'd like to "fuck [CEO of company] in the ass" or how some company's workers must be "bending over for the bosses" or how some woman executive makes the geek want to "blow his load". It is cliche to say this, I know, but These Guys Have Issues.
hyacinthus.
Availability of used copies. If the book has been around for a little bit, the chances of finding it in a local used book store or Amazon Marketplace are greater. Not all of us can afford to cash out $80 for a new copy out there. This book wouldn't qualify for it, but some computer titles reviewed on Slashdot would.
People can discuss it. Of course, I can post my review of X# Programming for Microsoft Linux OS 2007, and then just tell that the book is out in January 2006, so all you suxxors just have to wait to read it or post some stupid offtopic comments. Instead a review of the book that people already have would allow for more intelligent discussion, and allows different opinions on the book.
Other reviews out there. You can always compare the review to other book opinions out there, especially in the magazines and Web sites that specialize on new stuff.
That's not to say that Slashdot reviewers should post long reviews of the Old Testament or Shakespear's works, but reviewing books that have been around a little on discussion site like Slashdot is definitely better than reading a short blurb on a brand new thing in Time magazine.
Here is a link to the amazon item without the poster's affiliate link embedded.
May my karma forgive me :-)
Company Fucker
Everybody knows to what tune to sing it
Shut your fucking face comp'ny fucker
your a cocksucking asslicking compny' fucker
you're a comp'ny fucker yes it's true
nobody fucks comp'nys quite like you
Shut your fucking face comp'ny fucker
your the one that fucked your comp'ny comp'ny fucker
You don't eat or sleep or mow the lawn you just fuck your comp'ny all day long
Comp'ny...Fucker....Comp'ny...Fucker
You're a comp'ny fucker I must say
You fucked your comp'ny yesterday
A fuck it.
"Semper in excretum set alta variant"
1.) Sit in your basement .com startups go up .com startups go down
2.) Watch
3.) Watch
4.) On yellow stickies, keep track of startups going down.
5.) Turn yellow stickies to book
6.) PROFIT!!!!
It is official; Netcraft confirms: Google is dying.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.
Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Google is dead.
Fact: Google is dying
A review of Shakespere's new play -- Julius Caesar.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
If you read the artical there was also an anecdote about a board who stared calling eachother by the 1000monkey's names, including a woman who called herself "JamCracker."
I thought it was helarious (even registed the slashdot name jamcracker, btw).
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Personally, I don't like his writing style. However, I have friends who roll on the floor in fits of laughter when reading... since the book is essentially (rather base) humor, not information (since you can pull the information from a lot of places), only buy it if you know you like the way he writes!
Maybe in a few years when you can't pull this nfo from all over the place, and it's fallen out of the public consciousness, it could do with a more informative rewrite.
Don't blame me for the above!
How'd a piece of shit like you get a +2 bonus?
I dunno, sometimes .com's can succeed wildly - where else could you find a company that went from hobby to millions of dollars in revenue in less than 4 years? (Yeah, I volunteered, then worked for them.. point's still valid).
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?