F'd Companies

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.

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.

Comments

What chapter..

[grub]

What chapter does VA Software appear in?

Re:What chapter..

[pmc]

Chapter 11

So how is it so long

[91degrees]

I mean there's only so far you can pad out the "do X; ???; Profit" troll.

Just had to ask...

[Skevin]

What's in Chapter 11?

Solomon

Did they forget...

[Pig Hogger]

Did they think putting-in slashdotted companies?

Not such a good book.

[dietlein]

The Boston Globe gave it a "D".

Here's Salon's review: Looks like a "D" to me.

Re:Not such a good book.

[ivan256]

Wow, so was Salon.com featured in the book? That guy sounded pissed off! It's too bad that he spent most of the review telling us all how he hates Phillip Kaplan, and only got around to making one actual criticism of the writing. He claims he's in the target audience, but I doubt that the target audience consists of the idiots the book is about. I would think it's more aimed at all the people who thought they had missed out on the whole dot-com thing, and are now getting to point and laugh at all their buddies who bragged about being so wealthy for a few years.

Somebody explain to me why salon is still around.

Re:Not such a good book.

[MisterFancypants]

The Salon review was satire, not a real review. If you don't believe me, just click the link again and look up at the top, where it is clearly labelled "Satire".

Kinda cheap...

[Chocolate Teapot]

...picking on companies who aren't around to sue his sorry ass. I think I might buy this.

old news

[aa0606]

isn't this book about a year old now?

Re:Congrats!

[telstar]

"Wow, way to spell Schadenfreude right! I would have definitely expected to see that spelled wrong on Slashdot. Nice going."

• Don't worry ... they'll get it wrong when the story is reposted.

Insights?

[PhysicsGenius]

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*.

Re:Insights?

[Anne_Nonymous]

Insights? No. However, the book probably preserves the zeitgeist of the bubble for more than a few Gen-Xers. It's good to be reminded of our past follies every so often.

Re:Insights?

[iSwitched]

Actually I have to disagree - "business types" are exactly who need to read this, lest they not learn from their mistakes.

During my time with failed "dot-com X" during 1999 - 2002, we constantly tracked the downfalls of our 'competitors' via f'd company. Almost every one was highly funded and run by "business types". In fact, during the whole time I only met two college-kid basement startup types, and they had sold to MS and retired as millionaires.

That being said, I'm pretty sure the business types have learned a little since then, so the material in this book may be a bit dated. We won't see boom-times like the late-90's again - man what an era!

Re:Insights?

[Peyna]

Slashdot was successful; not necessarily because of their design, but because they were first.

A lot of these dotcoms failed because they were just doing the same thing many people before them had already done.

Re:Insights?

[ThinWhiteDuke]

In my book, guys who manage to draw multi-billion revenues from big businesses on a recurring basis qualify as "serious business type".

Now, you obviously consider that their services are not worth the money they're charging (and I'm not far from agreeing with you here). But that's a completely different point.

Too bad the author is no good

[erf]

I've read it. It's amusing. However, Philip Kaplan's writing is flat out the worst part of the book.

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 /. posters bought into) is deserving of much more thought and research than went into this little one off, quick buck, mindless catalog of failures.

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.

Re:Too bad the author is no good

[Anonvmous Coward]

"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."

Based on the excerpt provided on /., I doubt the guy really knew a whole lot what he was talking about. The Calender .COM example stuck with me. "It could have been done with a script". Not true. First you need people to build something on that level, then you need people to maintain the servers and fix problems that go wrong, then you need people working on making it better and better so that they don't lose to things like Exchange.

I have no doubt that they were over-capitalized, that they could have done more with less. But let's be realistic, the guy claimed they could have done with a couple of people and a script. No. What probably really happened was a good chunk of the 70 people there were sales people making cold calls to get companies to try out their calender stuff. If they could get whole corps to sign on, they'd instantly have a big account with lots of people using it. Doesn't sound so mindless now does it?

The reality is that if they'd gone with a more Google-esque approach, they'd probably have done better for themselves. But who knew that then? They had 20 mil to spend on it and they probably felt they needed to start big and quickly rake in the customers to maintain that.

I definitely won't be buying that book. I don't think the guy's capable of interesting insight into a .BOM. I already read the list off the top 100 business failures in 2000, so why pay for the extended version?

Re:Too bad the author is no good

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Not to nitpick or anything, but OnlineChoice.com was the company that could have been run by a script instead of 70 people. Not CalendarCentral."

Yep, you're right. It's too early for me. Heh. Thanks for being polite in pointing out my bone-headed mistake, it's appreciated.

Re:Too bad the author is no good

[Waffle Iron]

But let's be realistic, the guy claimed they could have done with a couple of people and a script. No.

It's funny that we're able to discuss this point on a site that is essentially comprised of a couple of people and a script.

What is it going to take

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

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.

Re:What is it going to take

[rindeee]

What you need my friend are two things. A 42" Plasma Display and an Aeron chair. Then and only then will you be taken seriously.

News of the Weird (Companies)

[lawyamike]

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.

What's in a name: JamCracker

[Inflatable Hippo]

> 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...

Re:What's in a name: JamCracker

[Eccles]

I specifically remember seeing the name "JamCracker" and thinking, good grief, the picture that paints in my head is just not to be shared!

Wil Wheaton's website is hosted by logjamming.com. Apparently it's actually not about gay lumberjack porn...

Re:worthwhile?

[Pike65]

"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."

I'm surprised that manage to make them as long as two pages with bogosity like that. I mean, I'd have made them a decent site for $100 million . . .

Drew Carey quote

[El_Smack]

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.

Re:Congrats!

[kisrael]

Wow, way to spell Schadenfreude right!

I think the guy takes that Schadenfreude thing way to far. Yes, a certain large percentage of dot coms were based on lousy ideas and served to fall by the wayside. But his website seems to take delight in reporting every business failure and layoff...even with good, old economy companies doing useful things and with decent ideas about keeping income greater than expenses.

I don't think of myself as a delicate flower, or particuarly easily offended, but this guy is really annoying. Maybe I'm bitter, living through two layoffs in two years, but still, the amusement he expresses in these events that really screw with people's lives doesn't make a good regular reading diet.

Great, put in writing what we all want to forget

[www.2cups.com]

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

uhhh

[Hobophile]

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.

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.

Re:uhhh

[halftrack]

The dotcoms didn't sell websites for millions of dollars (I guess they wouldn't have gone under then,) but got millions of dollars from investors to create a website that were to sell/promote a service. The website was the business and the dotcoms went out because they blew millions on websites that weren't worth more than a few thousands, which is what businesses like the author charge.

The author chose bad wording, but still ... the point's there.

Re:uhhh

[sql*kitten]

Charge what the market will bear and don't leave money on the table. Sales and Marketing 101.

You can only charge what the market will bear if you have your own cashflow under control. In 1998, a Fortune 100 website project was worth millions of dollars, because there were so few people who could build a high-end web site. The web agencies made one major mistake: they did not believe that websites would become commodities. So, they wrote their business plans assuming millions of dollars would come flowing in, that they could pick and choose clients, and that they didn't have to look for a new business model and get it in place before the bottom dropped out of the market.

A smart company would be charging what the market will bear, but running the business as if the only money coming in was what the job was really worth, and saved the money in the cash reserve for the lean times.

Crap failures...

[MosesJones]

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 .COMs were the best failures ever. But it just goes to show, not only are traditional business the best at succeeding.... they are also the best at failure.

Can't .coms be the best at anything ?

Re:Crap failures...

[Didion Sprague]

Are you for real? WorldCom is an interesting failure? WorldCom and Enron are like every other failure. You have a bunch of dumn executives attempting to swindle the so-called "little" people. I'm not sure what's so interesting about that.

What's interesting to me, at least, is a spectacular flameout like WebVan -- the company that was drilled hard into the ground by a dumb CEO who managed to get himself a multi-million dollar pension for twenty years. Company goes out of business, but the CEO -- a dumb old guy -- is making millions. Now, maybe some folks consider him a "smart" guy if he's making millions, but whatever.

Still the dot-com stuff is fascinating -- how so many people can fuck up so much shit. It boggles the mind. I mean, it's like all the gold mines out west that went out of business. The gold was there -- or tiny bits of it, at least -- but they didn't have the money or the time or the smarts to be able to capitalize on it.

WorldCom and Enron? Give me a break. That's old school, old-white-guy swindling. It's the same corporate greed that's gone on for years. What, Mrs. Kenneth Lay goes on television and talks to a TV interviewer and says they have "nothing" and that they're broke? Please. I got nothing, I'm broke, but I live like I have nothing and am broke. I don't wear Versace suits or have a wife with Ferragamo pumps. I don't have six houses scattered throughout the country and can't interest any interviewer from ABC to come and sit with me in my living room to talk about how broke I am.

And why? Because my story about being broke is like every story about being broke. It's a tough world out there. Sob sob sob.

It's like Alec Baldwin in 'Glengarry Glen Ross' come from Mitch and Murray downtown to get the sales force motivated. First place, a nice new Cadillac. Second place? Steak knives. Third place? You're fired.

What does it take?

It takes these -- and Alec lets a pair of brass balls hang low -- click, click, baby. Brass fucking balls. Not Versace silk, homes in Aspen, or Swiss watches that cost more than you make in a year.

So give me a break about Enron and WoldCom being interesting. That's old school, with a bunch of dumb old guys in charge. More homes in Veil and Aspen. Big fucking deal. Kenneth Lay looks like Billy Bob Thornton with a haircut and is as slow and dimwitted as they come. Him and his Andrew "Fast Eddie" Fastow, the sleek looking accountant who probably tells all his secretaries that people often mistake him for Richard Gere.

Turn on something like Startup.com -- the film about Kozmo.com and the annoying guy that ran it -- and that's interesting. It's fascinating to see how people took hold of the cultural hot buttons and then attempted to cultify it in order to make money and gain leverage.

That's what the dot-com "boom" was -- one big cult, brainwashes free-of-charge, with a bunch of gullible young people grasping for straws in a world that was paying no attention to Bin Laden, loose nukes, and the silent, gathering anti-Americanism roiling up like a tsunami across the globe.

Enron and WorldCom are just a bunch of old-school, bad-luck, corporate nightmares with the same old-school, bad-luck lessons to be learned. What's interesting in that? That people gave a fuck?

Please.

More retro reviews?

[Animats]

What's going on at Slashdot? This book was published in April 2002, and it was a bit dated even then.

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.

Is this a luck or a fuck?

[Tackhead]

Lucky Fucky!
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!)

Funniest sentence in book.

[PrimeNumber]

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. :)

Good-quality sarcasm = penises and pr0n?

[aCheshireCat]

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.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st ed (April 20

[droopus]

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?

Re:Dotcom anomaly

[MissMyNewton]

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

That's because of plenty of material like this still around:

Oh god, make it stop
Flake.com
Flake.com was a portal for breakfast cereal. I don't think you heard me. FLAKE.COM WAS A PORTAL FOR BREAKFAST CEREAL. I like breakfast cereal like the next guy, but sites like these make me so angry - not to mention VCs who support crap like this. "I'm discouraged, and I'm essentially broke" says the founder.
When: Jun 15 2000 09:19PM
Company: Flake.com
Points: 200
4 comment in the Happy Fun Slander Corner!

Dumbest Moments in e-Business history

[frozenray]

Here's a classic article from business2.com.

Example:

In its prospectus, Buy.com unveils history's most elegant business model: "We sell a substantial portion of our products at very low prices. As a result, we have extremely low and sometimes negative gross margins on our product sales."

Pure genius.

And here you can find "The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business", featuring Steve "Monkeyboy" Ballmer prominently on the first page.

Re:Basically...

[jmertic]

The whole era taught us (again), that there truely is no thing as a free lunch. A successful internet company actually has to have a non-internet side of it to be successful, with some exceptions ( namely Ebay, Yahoo, Google to name a few ). You can't just start a internet business in your basement and expect the money to come rolling in.

You also have to be able to sell something online that someone would likely buy thru that medium. For example, selling cars and furniture online doesn't work as well as going to the car dealership or the furniture store; it's just not something that we can be comfortable with. And back then, everyone tried to find a way to sell everything possible online; some found success ( ex. books/videos/CDs with Amazon, CDnow, etc ) and some realized it just couldn't be done easily or at all.

This can be extending to advertisement space ( ie banner ads, popups ). This works well outside of the internet ( TV/radio ads, billboards ), but it's value was overrated during the .com era. Paying a website to refer someone to some other website was predicated on the idea of that person actually buying something there, which never really panned out as they hoped (ie Web Site Visitor != Web Site Customer). Then to make things worse, a company solely built around income from such referrals (AllAdvantage.com) was just a ticking timebomb, especially when people figured out the cheats ( I know I did )

Today companies with a large online presence typically have a similarly sized complimenting offline presence. For example, you can go to an Apple store or dealer and buy and iBook, or goto the Apple Online Store and buy one. It seems to be the best bet.

the anti-f'ed up company

[ACK!!]

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.

How names are created

[Codex The Sloth]

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!

Re:How names are created

[cpeterso]

What exactly is "sick" about the name Jamcracker? It's not like the name was "Crack Jammer" (and even that does not really mean anything).

.com's best at nothing?

[mao che minh]

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.

Time to move on

[Tablizer]

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.

Network effects

[FallLine]

Slashdot? Slashdot's design is fine, judging by the ridiculously high user IDs we see, not to mention the sheer capacity of its users to bring any site in existance to its knees.

If Slashdot's design was so horrible, people wouldn't use it. Maybe in the early days when there was no equivalent, people were stuck here.. The fact remains, however, that no one worries about the 'kuro5hin effect'.

As for business sense.. CmdrTaco, Hemos and everyone else's hobby is being effectively sponsored by a largely visible name in the open source world. Sure, the Slashdot crew isn't in it for profit - but ending up with the deal they have isn't too shabby. Would that actual business people had the sense they did. ;)

I disagree. Just because slashdot (and many other entities) are large and relatively popular does not mean that they are particularly good or even just not mediocre. People may be technically free to move on the other alternatives, but with a product or service like this there is something known as a network effect. When many other people use the product or service (or ~90% in this particular niche) that is its primary value. Even though competing alternatives may be superior in every way, in and of themselves, the fact is that it can be very hard to coordinate a sufficiently large movement of people to a single standard/product/service/etc. For instance, do I really want to post to kuro5hin when no one else, or at least no one more in the main stream, will read me? Do I really want to read kuro5hin when there are few people posting? Do I really feel compelled to reply on kuro5hin to an article or comment that I disagree with (for the sake of other readers? Note: I'm not saying kuru5hin is the be all and end all, from what little i've seen of it it is too complex and silly for mass popularity.

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.

I can tell YOU don't run a business...

[SuperKendall]

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*...

Re:I can tell YOU don't run a business...

[Hobophile]

Actually, for what it's worth, I have run a successful computer consulting business.

Basically all I'm saying is if a customer comes to you and says, "I need a website. This is what I want. I have a million dollars budgeted for this."

You have a number of options. You can:

1) Take all $1 million. The customer has it budgeted, they're willing to pay it, and if you get a million dollars from them for a 5 minute job it hardly matters if you keep them as a client.

2) Take only $100,000, or only $50,000. Sure, the job's not worth a million, but is it really worth $100,000 or $50,000 either? The difference here is one of scale. Either way you're charging more than the work is technically worth to you, so if you really feel bad about it, there's always...

3) Take only what it costs you, or even less. After all, if you do it at cost, or for free, they'll love you, and you'll have them as a client forever. In fact, they'll probably haunt you till the day you finally close up shop because you're burned out from handling all the jobs they throw your way and you're not making any money for your efforts.

The reality of the marketplace is that demand and willingness to pay for a product at a certain price dictate the product's price.

You can get all high and mighty about how you're honest and you still have a job, but maybe if you took a few of those million dollar throwaway jobs every now and again you'd have the luxury of posting to slashdot in the middle of the afternoon without your boss looking over your shoulder, instead of consoling yourself with how you're still in the web design business.

The bill...

[Dr. Photo]

5-Minute Website: $1
Stupidity Surcharge: $10,000,000

Total: $10,000,001

Well, at least the company can write off most of that as an "education" expense... :)

Re:The bill...

[Tackhead]

> 5-Minute Website: $1
>Stupidity Surcharge: $10,000,000
>
> Total: $10,000,001

"Stupidity Surcharge"? Sorry, but I think you misspelled "Consulting/Agency Fees".

Here is one that will stay around for a while

[alen]

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?

Zelerate

[Jboy_24]

My ol' company was in there, and for interest to slashdot users, it was an opensourced perl based system.

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 .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.

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 .coms back in 99-00 knows, all of that was an impossibility at that time.

What the fuck?

[autopr0n]

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?