The Dot Com Super Bowl

An anonymous reader writes "Remember Epidemic.com and Lifeminders.com? Me neither. But Forbes has a funny story looking back on these dot-bombs and a bunch of other internet startups which advertised during the 2000 Super Bowl. They call the game The Bubble Bowl since over a dozen internet companies blew $40 million on ads, and then most of them went out of business. It's cool to see the ads (I miss the pets.com sock puppet!) and remember some of these crackheaded business ideas."

Comments

The TechieGold.com goldfish

[Skyshadow]

There was a lot of great advertising (and a lot of terrible, terrible ads, too) back in like the summer of 2000. The ads were like a manifestation of how insanely much cash was being thrown around back then. Having just moved to the Valley, it was an absolutely intoxicating experience -- we had no *idea* about the level of smack that was about to be laid down on us.

Anyhow, speaking of dot-com ads, I miss the "TechieGold.com" goldfish. There were these stupid radio commercials that played every, oh, fifteen seconds or on KSJO here in San Jose about a fish shilling for this job site. The fish would talk in a kinda-French accent about how he too could get a job if only, alas, he were not only a fish. This is back when there were still jobs in the Silicon Valley.

Then the jobs went away, the advertising dried up and I experimented with extended bouts of abject fear related to my unemployment and KSJO got bought by those motherless cocksuckers at ClearChannel and turned into a spainish language format. But still, here five years later my wife and I will occassionally slip elements of this commercial into our conversations -- last time we were at Ikea she made a comment about being "surrounded by gravel and crude decor" that made my crack up in the store and had the other proto-yuppies staring at us.

And no, I never did look at the site. Anyhow, this has been your ten second dot-com nonsequitor; you may return to your business.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[operagost]

Then the jobs went away, the advertising dried up and I experimented with extended bouts of abject fear related to my unemployment and KSJO got bought by those motherless cocksuckers at ClearChannel and turned into a spainish language format.

Whereas, if it had been a left-leaning media company like Viacom that had changed the format to Spanish-language, it would have been heralded as a proud victory for multiculturalism.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[AviLazar]

I really liked the cadillac ad. Where the guy is driving his suv cadillac, stops (180 spin) and then the sound catches up to him.

. I remember, a couple of years ago, there was an ad placed by mistake. As in the company bought a cheap, non-primetime ad and by mistake it got placed during the superbowl.

I believe those ads are around 500k-1mil per 30 second slots...talk about pricey.

my fav is still the brittney spears ads - well cause she is good looking

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[sangreal66]

I think they allocate a certain number of blocks for cheap local commercials. Atleast some affiliates must, because I've always seen crappy budget local ads during the superbowl in the few TV markets I have lived in.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[nekonoko]

The TechieGold.com goldfish was actually voiced by Ricardo Montalban - he doesn't have a French accent :)

"As for the voice, Ricardo Montalban provides a fun, sage-like delivery that gives the TechieGoldfish an immediate familiarity and distinction. At the same time," Abend continued, "scores of IT pros - and non-IT pros alike - are familiar with Mr. Montalban's work, most notably as the scene-stealing Khan in the Star Trek TV and film franchises." In one print ad, TechieGoldfish, perched in his bowl atop a computer, suggests to a weary IT pro: "I've swallowed a lot of things in my day, Frank ? but $35K for a person with your credentials, that's tough for even me to swallow." In another, the TechieGoldfish tells an IT person laboring within incredibly cramped conditions, "Some of my best friends are sardines, Alice. And even they have it better than this. Let TechieGold's career agents find you a better IT job, fast!"

http://www.techiegold.com/main.cfm?page=press_4. cf m

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[Spunk]

those motherless cocksuckers at ClearChannel and turned into a spainish language format

I think you mean los chupos del pene sin madre.

(ok, no, I don't actually know Spanish)

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, shut the hell up, you broken record. Christ, I hate you everything-relates-to-politics numbnutted freaks.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[Juanvaldes]

no.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[Anonymous Coward]

"Some of you feel sorry for this goldfish.... but that is because you are CRAZY! It does not have feelings! Replace it with a new unboring lutefisk from Ikea..."

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[Fulton Green]

It might be worth pointing out that TechieGold is still around. As it always was, it's simply an Internet storefront for the "job shops" that are under the umbrella of Stride & Associates, including my personal favorite (in the sarcastic sense), Atlantis Partners.

I met with an AP recruiter once after answering a TechieGold ad that looked attractive. Whether or not it's actually true, it looked as if the recruiting office's business model was based on hiring young, aggressive recruiters for commision-only compensation. It showed when the recruiter that interviewing me was trying to get me to commit upfront to taking whatever TechieGold could find for me (within my parameters) before consulting her database for acronym matches. I don't remember exactly why, but I seem to remember the recruiter steering me away from the specific job I had applied for. Hmmm ...

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[Anonymous Coward]

Cute commericals--shitty company. Techiegold SUCKED ASS!

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[AviLazar]

Well the commercial wasn't crappy, it just aired in an improper slot (during the superbowl)

I didn't know the networks were generous or that they allocated less expensive airtime for local companies. I presume you mean smaller companies (i.e. PECO is local to philly, but they are not small or cheap).

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[operagost]

So I'm trolling? I meant "spainish."

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[ConceptJunkie]

If by good-looking you mean "looks like a ten-year-old boy with boob implants" then yes, I'd agree with you.

Britney Spears is to good-looking what Twinkies are to nutrition (not taste, nutrition).

It was a fun time to watch from a distance because it was obvious that many of these companies would fail miserably, what wasn't obvious though, was the fact that almost all of them would.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[AK Marc]

Hey! I resent that. My company's crappy commercial will be aired locally in the Super Bowl for $5000 per 30 second spot.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing Britney has going for her is her body. Other than that she is not a classic beauty. She is only cute because she's young. Look at her face...the only difference between her and a soccer mom is that another 7 years hasn't gone by yet.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[AviLazar]

it is easy to insult, but at least be subtle. a "ten-year-old boy with boob implants" fails to come close to her looks.

But to each their own right?

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[ConceptJunkie]

Maybe you don't think so, but I do. She has absolutely no secondary sexual characteristics (that we can see) other than that rack.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[AviLazar]

I've never seen my mom naked before. In fact, other then the bulge she has on her chest (and on the occasion as a child i saw her in a bra) and the long hair (not necessarily a female trait) there is no concrete evidence she is a woman. She is pretty (she used to be a model) - but I have seen drag queens that look JUST like women.

So maybe, since I haven't seen my mom's genital area she is a guy. Just like your assumption about Brittney.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, she has a round pudgy face which makes her look like a little kid, but most importantly, she has no hips. Grown-up women have curves. Nice curves.

That latest picture of her that I am assaulted with when I go to Tower Records to look for the Vinyl Kings, Karmakanic or Mike Keneally which makes her look like some kind of trailer trash centerfold has has her wearing these ridiculous tiny shorts. The woman has no hips. I don't find her face pretty and she looks like a little boy from the chest down. No number of bubblegum music or gyrating with albino pythons is going to change that.

I dunno, I like adult women. Maybe that's why I'm not into anime.

Maybe she's a good singer; I've never been able to listen long enough to tell, but these days all that seems necessary for fame in the music world is big boobs and the willingness to thrust your pelvis in public. With folks like her, looks are the important factor. No one would listen to her if she was dumpy and old. Therefore, I think criticising her looks is fair game.

Really, it's not that big a deal to me, but since you asked...

When it comes to female vocalists, I more prefer Annie Haslam, Sheila Chandra, even Linda Ronstadt. You know, people who can actually sing.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[AviLazar]

lol....well musical talent is a matter of opinion - a lot of people think Brittney is a good singer (including little girls, who i am sure have no sexual interest in her).

Interesting enough - every artist you listed - I have never even vaguely heard of. I do not claim to be a musical expert, and I know I am terrible with names, but the artists you listed are definitly unknown to me (at least by name). :D

I personally think Brittney is a good looking woman. A damn good looking woman. I know many men who would agree. I also think she is a good singer; though I have seen better acting from that monkey who is holding a skull and dressed like he is Hamlet (forget the commercial).

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[ConceptJunkie]

Nothing wrong with having your own taste or opinion. If we were all the same it would be really dull.

But if you are really interested, some day you should broaden your music horizons... you'll be pleasantly amazed and surprised and what's out there. Put it this way... the best music never gets on the analog radio (perhaps classical, but certainly not any form or rock or jazz, not these days).

Forbes web site is one big commercial

[xmas2003]

Maybe it's just me, but I felt like when I went to the Forbes site I felt like it was one big commercial. The first link has about a dozen ads, and the second link is doing constant updates - seemed to be worse in IE than Firefox.

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[Elwood P Dowd]

Works great in high security mode. Throw it in your Restricted Sites group.

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[Leo McGarry]

You know, you're absolutely right. But it's far worse than you may realize. I picked up an actual, paper copy of Forbes the other day, and wouldn't you know it: It was full of ads, too. Every single two-page spread had some kind of ad on it, and some of the ads filled entire pages all by themselves! What an incredible waste of paper.

Ahem.

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[Raul654]

How do you do that? (Add it to restricted sites?)

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[Anonymous Coward]

Get Adblock for Firefox.

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[Anonymous Coward]

Malcom's rolling in his grave!

On his Harley(tm)!

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[afidel]

Tools->Internet Options->Security->restricted sites, add site in question.

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[KungF00]

I disabled JavaScript and image animations and I was able to actually view the page. Whoever designed that page needs to be shot.

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[enoor]

The entire 'article' was 8 sentences. That's a lot of bandwidth for 8 sentences. Sheesh.

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea, except the Forbes website would show up as a blank page.

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, waste paper? Whose? Forbes? They get paid for those? The advertisers? they get eyeballs.

No waste there, just good old capitalisim.

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[tylernt]

I think the web developers at Forbes should win an award for the dumbest web interface ever. Every time I got halfway through reading the text, the site would send me to the next 'slide' and I had to hit 'Previous' and then 'Stop' so I had time to finish.

What kind of brain-dead MORON designs that kind of web interface? Do they really think users are incapable of clicking 'Next' by themselves? How did they think the users GOT to forbes.com!?

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[Ohreally_factor]

I picked up an actual, paper copy of Forbes the other day

I don't get it. Why would you print out an entire website? You wanted to read it on the toilet? Why not just get a laptop?

godaddy

[Hoagy]

i hear godaddy is going to have an ad

Re:godaddy

[jester22c]

I hope so... they're awesome. I've been using them for years, business and personal.

Nostalgia.

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss the pets.com sock puppet!

So do I, so do I. :)

There is a store that still carries the mascot. For forty quid???

I can't put my finger on exactly why, but it just feels wrong. Maybe it is because of the sell out to Bar-None financial services?

Re:Nostalgia.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's in some 1800-BAR-NONE commercials (auto financing)

"Everyone deserves a second chance" is one of his lines...heh :)

Geeks in business

[MyLongNickName]

But everyone knows that geeks know everything about business, and the PHBs are the ones who destroy business! How could all these big geek corps go out of business? I blame Bill Gates and George Bush.

Re:Geeks in business

[notque]

But everyone knows that geeks know everything about business, and the PHBs are the ones who destroy business! How could all these big geek corps go out of business? I blame Bill Gates and George Bush.

If you are going to be sarcastic, could you please try to either be informative, or funny.

kthx.

Re:Geeks in business

[MyLongNickName]

Who was being sarcastic? Haven't you read your slashdot manual?

Re:Geeks in business

[notque]

Who was being sarcastic? Haven't you read your slashdot manual?

No, but you've certainly read your troll one.

Re:Geeks in business

[jellomizer]

Point taken, that nature of the echonomy back in 2000 was much different. Geeks were considered the way to the future, of profit. But part of the problem is that we got greedy and started asking for more money then we were honestly worth. A normal cubial programmer developing a web site should not be getting $100k a year. So when the .COMs started to slide they give them an option less pay to quit. (Because the job market is still large at the time most decided to get laid off because they can find an other job at that same wage, there are still some who still think they can!) Entry Level Programmers Went from 50k a year in 2001 to about 25-35k a year. Heck I am almost back to my starting salary.

Re:Geeks in business

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah?! well the jerk store called, and they're running out of you!

Re:Geeks in business

[MyLongNickName]

I think my larger point was that each of us makes up part of a team. Put a PHB in charge of setting the specs for a large program, and you are in trouble. Put a code monkey in charge of marketing, and you are in trouble. I see a billion rants about stupid managers, and how Slashdot Geek #12345 knows how it is done. The bubble proved that business decisions should be made by those with business sense.

Re:Geeks in business

[0x0000]

I blame Bill Gates and George Bush.

Funny how you can't use these names at all on /. anymore without someone jumping in to make sure your comment is depracted. "Troll" ? Hey, I think there's probably quite a few people who share this general feeling - not trying to prove blame, or anything - just generalized disconent without a target.

I haven't heard anyone blaming e.g. Bill Clinton or Martha Steward for the .com crash, for instance ... Of course, having brought this up here, I probably will, now.

"The dot.com crash was caused market maniplations by Osama bin Ladin and the Saudi Royals at the behest of Dick Cheney in order to soften up the amerikan public for 9/11 - millions of people laid off, fortunes shattered, lifestyles irretreviably lost - by the time lives were lost, the nation was already chronically depressed. 9/11 led to hopelessness and apathy, which in turn made the public malleable, easy made a tool of Cheney's drive for Empire..." ... or so they think in 2027 ...

Re:Geeks in business

[Loco3KGT]

hahaha i laughed

Re:Geeks in business

[notque]

Funny how you can't use these names at all on /. anymore without someone jumping in to make sure your comment is depracted. "Troll" ? Hey, I think there's probably quite a few people who share this general feeling - not trying to prove blame, or anything - just generalized disconent without a target.

It isn't just that he used the names, he was obviously insulting the readers of slashdot. Furthermore he was muddying the waters by comparing Bill Gates and George Bush, two people who are very different.

Also, I wasn't making sure of anything. I rarely post, was checking out slashdot on my lunch break and saw an obviously ignorant comment. I intended to say something concerning it.

That's not a vendetta, that's an occurance. Stop making everything seem like some cordinated attack.

I haven't heard anyone blaming e.g. Bill Clinton or Martha Steward for the .com crash, for instance ... Of course, having brought this up here, I probably will, now.

How could George Bush have anything to do with the dotcom crash? How is what he said relevant?

You're justifying an unjustifyable statement. Kudos for your dedication, but get a clue.

"The dot.com crash was caused market maniplations by Osama bin Ladin and the Saudi Royals at the behest of Dick Cheney in order to soften up the amerikan public for 9/11 - millions of people laid off, fortunes shattered, lifestyles irretreviably lost - by the time lives were lost, the nation was already chronically depressed. 9/11 led to hopelessness and apathy, which in turn made the public malleable, easy made a tool of Cheney's drive for Empire..." ... or so they think in 2027 ...

Ahh yeah, that's surely relevant.

Re:Geeks in business

[Angstroem]

But everyone knows that geeks know everything about business, and the PHBs are the ones who destroy business! How could all these big geek corps go out of business?

Because it weren't geek corps.

Geek corps go bankrupt because they don't advertise or advertise wrongly. But they usually don't go bankrupt for starting with an entirely stupid idea which only takes off for a while because greedy bankers stick all the money they get up the geeks' asses because the bankers somewhere heard that "the internet" (whatever that is) is the future.

In fact, geek corps usually have to beg for money and even if their idea is admittedly great (well, admitted by other tech savvy people), this doesn't mean they get the funding they need.

What I've seen on the Forbes site is mostly bullshit and YAMOSAP (yet another manifestation of something already present). Geeks and other people with brains in their heads would have told you that in 2000 and before.

Bankers, however, are a different kind. They don't believe in reason. They don't believe in knowledge -- after all, having a degree from a business school teaches you all you need to know. They also don't believe in mathematics, especially not in exponential functions. All they know is that there must be growth, growth, growth.

So here they found something where they believed it would promise growth and wealthiness beyond imagination -- and for a short period of time they were right. Because they pumped money in like mad. Until it happened what hat to happen...

Too bad, that the bubble burst also ruined the market for several other companies...

Re:Geeks in business

[notque]

I don't think the dot com bust proved that.

I think it proved that there were a lot of companies who sold software that people were not willing to pay for.

That's what it proved.

Re:Geeks in business

[jellomizer]

Well I don't think it was about marketing the code monkey did a good job at that, if they didn't do the job at marketing then the Dot Bomb would never have started. People did by stuff online or at least looked at it the problem was that they realized there was no real value to some of this stuff online vs. going to a store. Paying Shipping on a 40 lbs bag of dogfood makes the savings a lot less. Then there is the lost value of having to wait for it to ship. It was more of an issue that there money was coming in from investors making the company grow very fast faster then they should so they expanded themselfs faster then actuall profit so when the invesors stopped they had all these extra expenses without the revenue.

Re:Geeks in business

[homer_ca]

Bill Gates was somewhat indirectly involved. The antitrust trial judgement to split Microsoft was the trigger that burst the stock market bubble. It was inevitable anyway. If it wasn't the Microsoft verdict it would have been something else, but if you can point to one time that everyone started selling off in panic, that would be it.

Re:Geeks in business

[abigor]

...says the guy with uid 822545. You're quite the embittered oldtimer, eh? I'll bet you remember the glory days of Slashdot...yep, last week, it was a whole lot better round these parts.

Re:Geeks in business

[notque]

Bill Gates was somewhat indirectly involved.

I never questioned that Bill Gates was involved.

and I think you give him a little too much credit for market factors.

Eh.

Re:Geeks in business

[javaxman]

Heck I am almost back to my starting salary.

You're doing well. I AM back to my starting salary. Of course, it doesn't help that I moved out of the valley ( where I could still probably make more than my starting salary, but where housing costs are as insane as ever ).

Re:Geeks in business

[vertinox]

But everyone knows that geeks know everything about business, and the PHBs are the ones who destroy business! How could all these big geek corps go out of business? I blame Bill Gates and George Bush.

Truth be told, most of the geeks sold their businesses for millions of dollars to PHBs who then proceeded to destroy said business.

Re:Geeks in business

[susano_otter]

All they know is that there must be growth, growth, growth.

Are you a banker? Because I seriously doubt that the mindset of people who have devoted their professional lives to mastering the intricacies of banking can be reduced to such a simple one-liner. If you're not a banker, then why should I accept your analysis of what banking is about?

Re:Geeks in business

[Mattintosh]

Bankers rarely fit the definition of the classic Dilbert PHB. Bankers are businessmen who carefully study the flow of money and at the first sign of trouble, pull their funds out and make for the nearest exit.

PHB's are middle management who aren't socially competent enough to be upper management and aren't technically skilled enough to be a "plebe in the trenches". They're really just people who were popular in high school and drank and partied their way through college, only to find out that life isn't all fun and games. That's when they found a comfort zone waiting for them...

They are Institutionalized Stupidity, installed in the system to ensure slow, steady progress instead of wild leaps and bounds. When something wild begins to erupt from the ranks of technical plebes "below" them, they're there to shut it down long enough for the average progress of a given social structure (corporation, usually) to catch up, then they allow (and take credit for) the "innovation" that is (or would have been, five years earlier) manifest by the leap and/or bound made by the lower-ranked workers.

In summary:
Upper management -> deals with the big picture business aspects. Bankers fit in here.
Middle management -> Institutionalized Stupidity in human form. Not respectable or deserving of respect. See also: PHB.
Worker -> takes direction from upper management and is not opposed to them unless they're way off base. Hates PHB's because they fuck things up on a day-to-day level. Also known as: slave, plebe, serf, pion (or pee-on), associate, employee, human resource, expendable.

Re:Geeks in business

[servognome]

In fact, geek corps usually have to beg for money and even if their idea is admittedly great (well, admitted by other tech savvy people), this doesn't mean they get the funding they need.
Everybody has to beg for money, geeks typically aren't as good at it though. It's hard to translate a great idea into a neat little package that people understand.
They don't believe in knowledge -- after all, having a degree from a business school teaches you all you need to know. They also don't believe in mathematics, especially not in exponential functions. All they know is that there must be growth, growth, growth.
Business people aren't completely stupid, they knew that the growth was not sustainable, but still have to answer to investors/customers. The problem was not business education is worthless, its that they have to please investors, regular people. People don't use the same rationalization as geeks. When an investor see somebody else making 80% returns per year, they will take their money to that other business. The .com bubble was unique since it was part of a very long growth cycle. So the normal rationalization for investors about unsustainable growth degraded when they say companies double in price every year for 3+ years. At that point they demanded business invest in these risky .coms, otherwise their money would move elsewhere and the investment firm/bank would be out of business.
Geeks see things in absolute terms, business is run in comparitive terms. To be a sucessful business you don't have to be the best over the long-term, you have to always be better than the other guy in the short term. It's more forgivable to lose 50% of the investors money when everybody else loses 50%, than to only make 50% rate of return when others are making 80%.

Re:Geeks in business

[Angstroem]

No, I'm no banker. But you obviously didn't visit your local clerk during the heyday of dotcom. They were telling you what great opportunities they see, how big the earnings will be.

I do some stock trading from time to time and found this situation more than one time during that very time.

Too bad you didn't cite the part about them not knowing about exponential growth. But since you feel like objecting my simplistic banker picture, probably you can do the math: you have a business plan which is stupid and has hardly any future (and yes, back then also stupid plans with hardly any future got funding), any transaction volume is generated by burning, not earning money. Why should the value of such a company go any other way but exponentially *down*? Instead, those shares went exponentially up -- and finally belly-up as a lot of them deserved.

1. raise money and generate a lot of noise
2. ???
3. profit
didn't even work in South Park. Neither did it in real life.

And since you're raising the issue of "mastering the intricacies of banking" -- in not so few cases this rather meant "creative bookkeeping". Not something *I* want to devote my professional life to.

Re:Geeks in business

[friedmud]

I would have to say that this post is one of the best I have read in a while. You summed it all up pretty nicely i'd say!

"Institutionalized Stupidity" is a great one liner!

Friedmud

Re:Geeks in business

[bartle]

All they know is that there must be growth, growth, growth. So here they found something where they believed it would promise growth and wealthiness beyond imagination -- and for a short period of time they were right. Because they pumped money in like mad.

I worked for Epidemic.com in a technical capacity during it's brief bolide existance and though I didn't sit in on all the high level meetings I walked out of there with a sense that the whole company had been conned. It was obvious to everyone in the company that we were blowing stupid amounts of money but I really think this was due less to management incompetence than pressure from the investors to spend everything we got.

The plan was, I believe, to create a pile of small companies, drive them to IPO, and make a ton on the stock. The investors knew exactly what they were doing and it was never their intention to create long term businesses. And it worked - the controlling forces made tons of cash, the general public got screwed out of money, and some corporate officers got handcuffed to a sinking ship.

Re:Geeks in business

[perdu]

That's OK, you're their all-time best seller!

Re:Geeks in business

[0x0000]

First of all, I want to thank you for supporting my point so completely.

It isn't just that he used the names,

Ah. So it was just the one name, then... I should have known that - as you point out - you don't know enough about Dubya to even understand the connection, anyway... You're a Gatesian.

he was obviously insulting the readers of slashdot.

Huh. I guess that just went right over my head - *whoosh* - just like the irony of you responding to me apparently got by you... Just to be clear on this, I'm insulting you personally, not the rest of the readers.

Furthermore he was muddying the waters by comparing Bill Gates and George Bush, two people who are very different.

Oh, I can't agree with that. Dubya and Charming Billy are very similar - they both want to control the world and they both like the idea of Microsoft not getting sentenced for the crimes of which they have been convicted. You do remember that campaign promise wrung out of Dubya, doncha - Charming Billy should remember it, since he's indebted to Dubya, now, on account of Dubya making good on that particular promise. Does the name "Ralph Reed" ring a bell? (that's a clue, in case you didn't recognize it as it bit you on the ass)

Stop making everything seem like some cordinated attack

Uhhhmmmm.... no?

How could George Bush have anything to do with the dotcom crash?

How could he not? He's the leader of the free world, and he let it happen on his watch. Sounds reasonable to me.

How is what he said relevant?

Well, at least he didn't burden me with a detailed account of his lunch hour. Offhand I'd say his post was basically one more relevant to, say, Reality that any of the drivel you're spouting.

.... so now you can say you've been trolled.

Re:Geeks in business

[Anonymous Coward]

nice! now that's funny

Re:Geeks in business

[Anonymous Coward]

what's the big deal? you saved up when you were making your big money back then, right?

Re:Geeks in business

[bigberk]

mod parent up insightful. i went through university studying business alongside absolute idiots who couldn't wait for the next party, who finished school without learning anything and without any skills. completely useless people

Re:Geeks in business

[Anonymous Coward]

i like you, so i'll give you a tip... financial companies/lenders today are in the same situation. they are just eating up cash (leverage thanks purely to historically low interest rates) but without constantly being able to suck new money, they are screwed. go profit ;)

Re:Geeks in business

[Angstroem]

May I tell this little story about my father. It happened way before the dotcom bubble.

He was visiting the local bank to inform himself about possible investment possibilities. The investment banker offered my father certain shares telling that these really have high potential and he can surely tell because he's working in that job for over 25 years now.

My father smiled and said: "Well, then you're either bullshitting me or you're outright incompetent. If you were that competent as you say, you wouldn't still be playing here in the 'little league' after 25 years... Couldn't it rather be that selling shares and controlling equity funds guarantees more and also more 'secure' money after all than actually investing yourself in the stuff you recommend? And if you don't trust your recommendations that far, why should I?"

dizzy refresh rate

[mortonda]

Can anyone here actually read the entire slide before it reloads a new slide?

Re:dizzy refresh rate

[Lisandro]

I have this weird, irrational feeling that the "slower" button might slow the slides down. But that's just me :)

Re:dizzy refresh rate

[The I Shing]

No, what's up with that? I would just get to the bottom of the thing and before I could read the last paragraph, the page would refresh to a new slide. The little "Stop" link at the top doesn't seem to do anything, either. I was also disappointed that they don't seem to showing the commercials in their entirety.

Re:dizzy refresh rate

[kalidasa]

The default speed is designed for those who are only reading the graphic. (Think about what that says about their reading skills.) Those of us who read the fine print (i.e., not the usual Forbes reader) have to either speed read or click "slower."

Re:dizzy refresh rate

[Igottapoop]

Add this to the end of the first link ?thisSpeed=6000000000 Or once you get directed to the second one just throw a bunch of 000's on and hit enter. That'll slow it down a bit. :-)

Re:dizzy refresh rate

[Anonymous Coward]

The "faster" button was no help at all. Perhaps they should document their interface better?

Re:dizzy refresh rate

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup I get plenty of time to read the text, one of the very, very few advantages of still having a dial-up connection.. Right im just off for some coffee while this uploads......

Re:dizzy refresh rate

[shotfeel]

If the "slower" button doesn't do it, there's always the "stop" buttion.

Re:dizzy refresh rate

[camcloud1]

Dizzy? It's just downright annoying. You would think Forbes could provide better production than that. But being the geek I am I endured it anyway...

Fuck I work for Kforce.

[F34nor]

and my job is going NOWHERE.

Re:Fuck I work for Kforce.

[chiph]

Things could be worse - it could be leaving the country without you.

Chip H.

Re:Fuck I work for Kforce.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not anymore you dont.

- Kforce Human Resources Manager.

On second thought...

[mortonda]

My bad, The slashdot effect will slow down the server soon enough.

lol

CrackheadedBusinessIdeas.com

[Anne_Nonymous]

CrackheadedBusinessIdeas.com

Quick, buy the URL and get some VC funding...

wtf was that?

[Bad-JuJu-Man]

Worst Link Ever! Could they have made that any more annoying? I couldn't even read the stupid text before jumping to a new add.

Re:wtf was that?

[anagama]

Try pressing the "stop" button. The only unfortunate aspect is that everytime you click for the next one, you have to press the "stop" button again or it will move on to the next automatically.

Re:wtf was that?

[fiannaFailMan]

I'll second that. And stopping the slide show doesn't do you any good either. After you click 'next' you have to click 'stop' on the next page because it seems to automatically resume playing. Had it been done in Flash, the ./ers would have been out in force blaming the technology rather than the page designers as usual.

sock puppet lives on

[bigbigbison]

The pets'com sock puppet lives on in commercials for insurance company 1-800-Bar-None.

Re:sock puppet lives on

[The I Shing]

And when Triumph the Insult Comic Dog was interviewing the members of Bon Jovi, he commented on the fact that they were using his image on some of the passes. "I'll sue your asses!" he shouts at them, "I'm not kidding! Ask the sock puppet!" and then the scene cuts to him having his way with the sock puppet while huffing, "Say my name! What's my name?! Say it! Say my name!" Ah, late night TV.

Re:sock puppet lives on

[macklin01]

"Because everybody deserves a second chance!" (TM) :) -- Paul

Re:sock puppet lives on

[ignorant_newbie]

it's not an insurance company. it's a_21%_car_loan_for_people_with_bad_credit company

Re:sock puppet lives on

[The-Bus]

As stated in the article, it's for car financing. I've actually seen the commercial but did not remember the name of the company.

What is more interesting is to see what of the domain names?

Pets.com domain is now owned by PetSmart, who cannot render the page in Firefox correctly.
TechieGold.com is still around.
Computer.com is owned by Tech Depot.
LifeMinders.com is owned by "Cross Media Marketing Corporation"
Epidemic.com is one of those weird search engines, this one owned by "Netincome Corp"
OurBeginning(s).com now points to Ashton Stationery.

Note none of the "noun" Dot Coms survived... Warehouse.com or Drugstore.com or Shoes.com. But there's plenty of "name" ones that people remember (eBay, etc).

Re:sock puppet lives on

[PCM2]

Note none of the "noun" Dot Coms survived... Warehouse.com or Drugstore.com or Shoes.com.

Whaa--? Drugstore.com is still around. The Warehouse.com domain is owned by CDW, which bought MacWarehouse and MicroWarehouse, etc. I don't know if Shoes.com is the original, but it looks like an online shoestore to me. If the name recognition on "noun" dot-coms is so poor, you'd think they would have all just packed it in by now.

Re:sock puppet lives on

[Toasty981]

The whole Triumph/Pets.com thing started because Pets.com actually sued Robert Smigel for "defamation" of their puppet, claiming that Triumph's actions is ruining the sock puppet's reputation. Triumph responded on Conan with a hilarious mock apology press confrence.

The best thing was that Pets.com alleged that Triumph was a rip-off: Too bad Triumph had appeared before Pets.com!

Re:sock puppet lives on

[EnronHaliburton2004]

And if you want to have a good laugh, here's the video with Insult and The Sock Puppet:

http://www.milkandcookies.com/keywords/triumphdog/

Re:sock puppet lives on

[uforgotten]

wtf are you talking about - I buy from drugstore.com on a monthly basis....

dang!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was pretty funny, I can't believe those people blew that much on ads!!@!

Such nostalgia

[Anonymous Coward]

Way back when the democrats were balancing budgets and republicans were fighting against "know your customer" laws and national IDs.

Better off advertising on Blade Runner

[AtariAmarok]

It looks like these companies would do a lot better advertising on things like "Blade Runner", like Atari and TDK did. This did wonders for them.

Re:Better off advertising on Blade Runner

[White Roses]

Don't forget Coca-Cola (they introduced the dismal New Coke shortly afterwards).

Re:Better off advertising on Blade Runner

[AndroidCat]

The record for companies that were in 2001: A Space Odyssey very good. Pan-Am...

Re:Better off advertising on Blade Runner

[badasscat]

It looks like these companies would do a lot better advertising on things like "Blade Runner", like Atari and TDK did. This did wonders for them.

Ironically, the Atari advertisements you see in Blade Runner are no longer ironic.

Re:Better off advertising on Blade Runner

[Stormwatch]

As far as I know, TDK is still around, and doing fine.

let's not single out the people with ideas...

[jxyama]

>remember some of these crackheaded business ideas

let's not single out the people with "crackheaded" ideas for scrutny and remember the VCs that believed those ideas were worth their money.

Re:let's not single out the people with ideas...

[twiddlingbits]

Now I get it... the VC's were the ones on Crack! We were just taking advantage of them in thier diminished state. Catbert would be proud! :)

Re:let's not single out the people with ideas...

[Tablizer]

let's not single out the people with "crackheaded" ideas for scrutny and remember the VCs that believed those ideas were worth their money.

The smarter VC's used *stock investor* money, not their own money. Many of them made out reasonably well because they sold some of their shares on the way up. In other words, the smarter VC's took advantage of stupid stock buyers and most of the dot-com money came from them.

slide show

[same_old_story]

is the slideshow refresh speed suppoused to remind us how quickly these companies disappeared?
"oh, pets.com and"
(burst)
"oh, computers.com and"
(burst)

Reminder...

[grub]

To check out Fucked Company for the latest dot-bomb companies.

Re:Reminder...

[Anonymous Coward]

AYRTS, IA?

YAFR?

Re:Reminder...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuckedcompany.com needs to add themselves to their list. They suck now.

Fuck you, Forbes

[karmaflux]

I read the article. Some of it was amusing.

But the idiot in charge of writing that moronic javascript slideshow needs to be shot. Or fired. Or both.

Re:Fuck you, Forbes

[daniil]

I, too, read the article. It took me about thirty seconds* or however long it took for the three first posters to post their comments (typing "fp!" doesn't take much time, does it?). It's probably the first time a Slashdot blurb is actually more informative than the article linked to :7

* Not counting the slide show.

Re:Fuck you, Forbes

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Once you figure out that you can stop and cycle through the slides (look near the top), it's no longer as frustrating.
2. A follow up to #1 is that once you hit 'next' after a 'stop', the slideshow continues with that fast pace. Grrr...
3. Heh - try clicking on 'faster' about a dozen times.
4. I'm impressed with the +5 100% underrated mod - very rare.

Re:Fuck you, Forbes

[Anonymous Coward]

Got modded up to +5 off of underrated? HRUM...! If you care that much about it you're a retard.

Re:Fuck you, Forbes

[shawn(at)fsu]

you can also change the speed at the end of the URL, that helps. Still I nice pause or stop button would have been nice.

Re:Fuck you, Forbes

[imsabbel]

Yeah.
Its so intelligent showing a pic plus 4-5 sentences of text for 5 seconds or so ...

Re:Fuck you, Forbes

[aav]

Er... Java script ? Which Java script ?

Then again, perhaps it's just that I know how to pick a good web browser and set it up so that it runs all Javascript functions only on sites I explicitely allow it to... All others are confined to not running a bunch of functions (e.g. openWindow) unless I actually click on the link.

Re:Fuck you, Forbes

[danila]

Hmmm... It worked fine for me. I just let it load all 10 pages, then instantly went to the first one (in Opera) and viewed them at my own pace just going forward (Alt+Right). It could have been done better, but it's good enough as it is.

Re:Fuck you, Forbes

[bigberk]

But the idiot in charge of writing that moronic javascript slideshow needs to be shot. Or fired. Or both.

But you did notice it, didn't you? I'm not trying to be funny, but marketing people don't care if they irritate you. Any kind of stimulation is to their advantage since it gets your attention and forces you to feel something... marketing is about affect.

Re:Fuck you, Forbes

[Anonymous Coward]

My god, grow up.
You are on /., so you can read. Did you happen to see the words "Previous" "Slower" "Stop" "Faster" "Next" along the top?

Did you think they were just eye candy? Did you happen to um, I dunno, try one of two of them?

Christ all mighty, 20 seconds I will never get back.

Re:Fuck you, Forbes

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, perhaps it's just that I know how to pick a good web browser... and on and fucking on.
Yep, you're pretty much the most awesome person I've ever met. That's for sure.

Realistically, I bet you're that annoying fuck at parties that just won't shut the fuck up about how much Windows sucks and how awesome your Powerbook is. Nobody cares dude. Nobody cares. Get a life.

In the summer of 2000....

[Snowbeam]

...we also had Adcritic as a free and enterprising service to see all our Ads for free. Now see what it has becomes :-(

Re:In the summer of 2000....

[jester22c]

Ahh the days of free adcritic. I must have used up their bandwidth limit laughing my ass off... too bad.

Re:In the summer of 2000....

[LetterJ]

However, that demise still mystifies me. How can a site that is *nothing but ads people voluntarily watch* fail? They were running the very same ads that the advertisers were paying huge dollars to air on television, oftentimes aired to an empty couch. Yet, this site couldn't figure out how to make money with people voluntarily downloading commercials.

Re:In the summer of 2000....

[bStrom]

Easy - it cost more per download (bandwidth costs) than advertisers were willing to pay.

RTFA

[blanktek]

This article must be great for /.ers! You can't even read the article! I know this is Forbes so it has to be similar to some horrible PowerPoint presentation but that is just sad. I think I can hit the "next page" button on my own. Then again, no one goes to Forbes for anything worthwhile, just knee-jerks.

The most ridiculous idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I forget who the company was, but they promised home delivery of pizza. You would use your phone or web browser and they would deliver a pizza to your home. It sounded so ridiculous at the time, I didn?t believe anyone would be foolish enough to invest in such a scheme. I wonder how much shareholders lost.

Re:The most ridiculous idea

[panaceaa]

Maybe you're thinking of a fly-by-night .com, but Papa John's started doing that during the bubble. It was fantastic! While I was coding away I could order a pizza and not even be bothered to look away from the screen until the pizza man arrived.

Unfortunately it didn't last. They started calling me to confirm my address after I ordered online. This broke the dream that was "magically arriving pizza". I sent in a customer service complaint explaining the "magic" of being able to get a pizza by merely typing at a computer, but I received no response. Papa John's continued to call to confirm. I have since stopped ordering pizza online, though now I mostly order Thai instead.

Re:The most ridiculous idea

[Anonymous Coward]

why, it's not so ridiculous. there's even one here in Boston suburbs that does that. I don't remember the name, but they go buy you some junk food of your choice and deliver it to you (they're not affiliated with the junk food supplier). they still exist, and, yes, they have customers!

Re:The most ridiculous idea

[panaceaa]

Oh I just realized you were sarcastic.

But still... WTF is Papa John's thinking by breaking the magic!!!! :((((

Re:The most ridiculous idea

[Skater]

The local Papa John's doesn't call me to confirm the order, they just show up with the order. Maybe your local branch got burned too many times by fake orders or something...or they have a PHB running it.

Re:The most ridiculous idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you maybe thinking of Kozmo.com? They were one of the main symbols of the dot-bomb era to a lot of folks. In cities with a Kozmo warehouse you could go to their website and order ice-cream, candy, videos, etc. and a messenger would deliver it to you. I don't recall the exact figures, but IIRC they blew through tens of millions of VC before going belly up. They even paid Starbucks to let them put return boxes for the videos in their stores. I picked up a surplus orange Kozmo bike messenger bag from Chrome Bags last year (they're sold out or I'd put up a link) as a kind of Memento Mori of the dot-com wonderland.

Re:The most ridiculous idea

[blew_fantom]

believe it or not, in korea (where else), this is still a reality. in fact, a news program in the vein of 'dateline' in korea locked some people into a condo with absolutely no furnishings, no food, no water but did give them a computer, broadband internet connection, and a credit card number. amazingly, within one hour, most of the people were able to order groceries, pizza, beds, couches, toiletries, and other household items and had them delivered to the "condo"... i kid you not.

Re:The most ridiculous idea

[blippy]

In Glasgow, Scotland, you can get pizza over the internet at http://www.pizzamagic.com/. It's been going for years.

Day trading

[adam31]

E*trade's harsh reality:
The day traders went broke and had to get real jobs

More like had to start doing their real jobs at their real jobs... until those went bust. And then they had to get real jobs.

Re:Day trading

[Anonymous Coward]

only those who believed in the fiction of infinite growth had to quit... I did just fine, thank you :)

I worked for one of them....

[brywalker]

I worked at Outpost.com which was doing all the work for Computers.com on Superbowl Sunday. Just about everyone that worked for Outpost in the sales and customer services departments worked that night, we had a ton of food and stuff while we waited for the commercial to air and the phones to start ringing off the hook. Long story short, the phones rang like 5 times. No more calls after that. Dismal failure.

Re:I worked for one of them....

[Reignking]

Didn't marketing think that

1) People would continue watching the Super Bowl
2) Even if people were captivated by the ad, visit the website, and not call??

Re:I worked for one of them....

[That's Unpossible!]

Did your sales staff understand that most people would be USING THE FUCKING WEBSITE?

Re:I worked for one of them....

[brywalker]

Oh yeah. The SALES staff knew EXACTLY what was going to happen. Couldn't tell that to the management, though. The whole thing was the 1-800-COMPUTER phone number. Morans.

Re:I worked for one of them....

[Bodhammer]

The Outpost.com ads with the hamster(stunt hamster) and the marching band/wolves are the funniest commercials I have every seen!

Anyone have a link to those gems?

Re:I worked for one of them....

[delus10n0]

I have them on CD at home, if you really want me to dig them up..

Re:I worked for one of them....

[sconeu]

Those two were my favorites as well. I actually wrote to compliment them on those commercials.

I understand outpost.com got in trouble for the hamster one because people thought it was real, and they got the animal rights types on them.... For some reason nobody complained about the wolves... :)

Futurama referenced

[InfiniteWisdom]

The idiot in charge of writing that moronic javascript slideshow needs to be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun.

Re:Futurama referenced

[Tablizer]

The idiot in charge of writing that moronic javascript slideshow needs to be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun.

Amen! It kept moving to the next image before I even asked it to. And, when I closed the pop-up mpeg/movie snippet viewer, it closed the original window also.

Tip to designer: If HTML can do the same thing, then do not use JavaScript instead. And, lose the image progression timer.

Re:Futurama referenced

[ConceptJunkie]

Don't bust on the poor Javascript guy, he was a CEO worth $100 million 5 years ago.

Re:Futurama referenced

[Tablizer]

Don't bust on the poor Javascript guy, he was a CEO worth $100 million 5 years ago.

For once I wished he stayed that way

the bubble bowl?

[jxyama]

totally off topic, but if 2000 super bowl can be dubbed the "bubble" bowl, then 2004 would naturally be remembered as...

the breast bowl!! (NSFW)

Re:the bubble bowl?

[Tepshen]

Note: the link in above post is NOT safe for those at work.

Re:the bubble bowl?

[jxyama]

am i mistaken to think that "NSFW" is not a commonly used acronym here..? i've posted once before with NSFW content website and both times, someone mentions this even though i put NSFW right after the link...

Re:the bubble bowl?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm waiting for the Booty Bowl.

"Here you go, FCC, smack *dat* azzz!"

--
yknow, I'd post logged in, but stupid fuckers can't handle their mod points...

Re:the bubble bowl?

[Leo McGarry]

am i mistaken to think that "NSFW" is not a commonly used acronym here..?

Yes. You are also mistaken to think that sentences aren't supposed to begin with capital letters, that the personal pronoun "I" can be used without capitalization, that two periods followed by a question mark is a punctuation mark and that it's okay to end a sentence with an ellipsis without a period.

Furthermore, please avoid the use of acronyms that aren't already accepted as words themselves. You can say things like "DVD" and "CPU" because they're universally understood, but generally acronyms serve only to hinder communication, not to facilitate it. This isn't 1850. You're not Western Union by the letter.

At this very moment, this Web site is running a story called "Don't Write FORTRAN" that cleverly (or, you know, not) admonishes computer programmers for writing illiterate computer code. Might I humbly suggest that we hold ourselves to the same standard when it comes to things meant to be read by other human beings?

Re:the bubble bowl?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a related link!

You're welcome.

Re:the bubble bowl?

[rjelks]

How the fark are we supposed to know what NSFW means?

Re:the bubble bowl?

[Belisarivs]

My God, but that was beautiful. I only wish I had mod points to give you.

Re:the bubble bowl?

[Anonymous Coward]

>How the fark are we supposed to know what NSFW
>means?

Er... Just f'n Google it?

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=nsfw+definit io n&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Re:the bubble bowl?

[athakur999]

If we're browsing Slashdot, we can't be working, so NSFW is inaccurate and confusing.

NSFTNWAW is better... Not Safe For Those Not Working At Work.

Re:the bubble bowl?

[Mattintosh]

I would think that Boobie Bowl would be a better name...

Bubble... boobie... whatever. Maybe titty bowl, but that would sound too much like Tidy Bowl and would someone to get sued for defamation of cleaning products' character.

Re:the bubble bowl?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: the link in above post is NOT safe for those at work.

Did you think there would be much confusion about a link called "the breast bowl" that links to janetjacksonbreast.com?

Re:the bubble bowl?

[vertinox]

Umm... If I am discussing something on the internet with someone and they ask me: "What does 'lol' mean?" I can safely assume that they are a internet newbie or just having had many internet discussions.

Doesn't mean they are a dumb person... It means they can't speak "internet" yet.

Like it or not there is a second language on the internet much like there is American English and British English. (Whats the different between a bar and pub anyways?)

Language evolves for the situation (take the military for example and many certain industries).

Ever hear Brokers or Lawyers talk amoung themselves? It's foreign to me and they a great of 3 letter acronyms.

Now put with in a room with another "computer" person and we'll be throwing around things no one else will understand. (Or any MMOG or AD&D player with HP, MP, and AC)

I'm sorry but in "shop talk" we use three letter words and in a large corporation we worked for we had a second language to describe issue. "So you took your DSL to the NID to check the synch? Ok we need to TNF this so they won't get an ETF."

And that is spoken conversation... Not typed.

I refuse to believe that in a forum computer geeks that we are not allowed to use "shop talk" and "internet language". It's like telling the Military they can't use their Acronyms when they are going out to public bars.

And if you don't know what NSFW is then you sir have not used the internet very much.

comment

[orpx]

this editor is a crackhead, lol

the old times

[greechneb]

Boy that makes me just want to go back to those times, when people with no valid business plan would get cash handed to them on a silver platter, just because of the term "Internet" in their mission statement. Techies like us getting overpaid to do nothing.

<sarcasm>
Wait a sec, no it doesn't, I'd rather be here in these times, with all these good jobs, and job security, what was I thinking?
</sarcasm>

The Onion : scripting the Bush administration

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I miss those days!

Forgotten?

[Otter]

Today, most of these Internet pioneers are dead and gone, forgotten as the score of the game (St. Louis 23, Tennessee 16).

The tackle on the one yard line, with time expired, to prevent a game-tying touchdown? Yeah, there's probably not a football fan alive who remembers that ending. I guess my brain is too full of memories of the Cowboys beating the Bills 48-14 six years in a row.

Re:Forgotten?

[greechneb]

You mean the one that Mike Jones, the linebacker, made to stop the outstretched Kevin Dyson, at about the half yard line, since St. Louis had screwed up and let Tennessee have too much time on. The one that everyone at work talked about for weeks afterwords, the one that half the people at work had a background with that picture on it? - Nope, don't remember that one at all, now you tell me there were commercials during that game... interesting.

Re:Forgotten?

[Politburo]

Leon Lett.

That is all.

Re:Forgotten?

[Leo McGarry]

Apart from the fact that yes, it was a good football game, that's just plain bad writing. "It's as forgotten as this thing that I, the author, remember in perfect detail." Dumbass writer, and a double dumbass on the editor who let it slip through.

Re:Forgotten?

[mbbac]

You guys are bluffing. You're just getting this stuff from the NFL recordings on iTunes Music Store. There's no way you could be enough of a fanatic to actually remember that stuff... is there?

Re:Forgotten?

[UnHolyRam]

It gets better, IN the slide show on the slide for Computers.com They Say that people didn't think the Tennessee Titans could be beaten. The St. Louis Rams, known then as the Greatest Show on Turf, were a heavy favorite, and most people were surpised that the Titans weren't blown out at halftime, especially considering the Titans were a wild card team that year, that had the benefit of a questionable lateral in the Music City Miracle just to stay alive. Maybe Forbes should stick to reporting about Business, because they obviously don't know anything about Sports.

Re:Forgotten?

[Azghoul]

Hey, kiss my ass pal, the Cowgirls only beat us twice. :)

Re:Forgotten?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the same year that the same Kevin Dyson caught the "optical illusion lateral" in the Music City Miracle.

Fuckin' great year for football fans.

I was basically a drug pusher in those days

[Anonymous Coward]

'Crackheaded' is a great description. I was selling Sun and other datacenter type equipment and man I'd go on a sales call, meet with a bunch of dorks with brand new BMW's while half the office is playing fooseball and they'd want two new E10K's ASAP. Of course we'd probe into what they do and why they want them and often the reason was because the scumbag dumbass VC's LOVED companies with big iron. Now these dudes expected to make their money through site advertising and other foolish little things. Hey as long as they had the credit, we hooked em up!

Re:I was basically a drug pusher in those days

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey as long as they had the credit, we hooked em up!

Consequently, I can buy a half-loaded E10K on eBay for $20K, whereas five years ago I spent $7m on a fully-loaded Starfire.

Still have the jacket, though. Best piece of swag I ever got.

Re:I was basically a drug pusher in those days

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine that for real drug pushers those times were great too. Now, apart for Darl, things must be pretty flat.

About the Dot Bombs...

[devphaeton]

I know a lot of folks look back on that and scoff, and say "eBusiness/The Internet has `failed'" and stuff...

Well, at least as far as I can tell, most of the stuff that has bailed out was stupid, superfluous, overly flashy, or otherwise destined for failure anyways.

Any of the *real* sorts of eCommerce/eBusiness stuff seems to be doing quite well, such as Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, ebay, google, slashdot, etc...

In short, I think that people who follow media hype are stupid.

Re:About the Dot Bombs...

[GigsVT]

Yeah, the only holdout with a faulty business plan now is Microsoft. Once they go, we can finally say the bubble has burst, and people are ready to demand companies with viable business plans to invest in.

Re:About the Dot Bombs...

[nine-times]

Well, at least as far as I can tell, most of the stuff that has bailed out was stupid, superfluous, overly flashy, or otherwise destined for failure anyways.

Sounds pretty much right to me. Seems like a lot of the ventures that failed consisted of people who didn't understand the potential of the internet selling business proposals to other people who didn't understand the internet at all. They were crappy business proposals that would have been thrown out immediately, but because it had the work "internet" somewhere in there, and "internet" was the magic ingredient that always made money, everyone blindly went along.

So you end up mostly with companies who follow one of three models:

1. Companies like Dell and Barns & Noble, who already had successful businesses, adding an additional distribution channel
2. Companies like Amazon.com and ebay, who, for the most part, function as an extremely comprehensive mail-order catalogue with good search capabilities
3. Sites like Slashdot and Fark, or media sites like Cnet or CNN. Basically, sites that offer news, reviews, and cheap content and support themselves through advertising, usually banner ads of some kind.

Maybe there are exceptions. I guess you could add another category for "search engines", but the failure ratio of those are high. Yahoo and Google made it through, but that's about it. Plus, both of those sites border on the 3rd category, so I'm not sure where to put them.

iTMS-- does it count as a dot-com? It's not really a web site, and it might be category 1, since it's a new distribution channel for an existing business. But also it doesn't make money for itself, so it's a funny example.

But yeah, a whole lot of these businesses were ill-conceived silliness banking on those magic internets to generate money out of nowhere.

Re:About the Dot Bombs...

[danila]

But imagine that all those resources wasted on boom.com and shit like it would have been spent on sane projects run by cost-conscious entrepreneurs? We would have been at least a few years ahead.

Re:About the Dot Bombs...

[TheFlyingGoat]

4. Companies that may or may not have received venture capital, but didn't spend wastefully.

There are quite a few small companies that started during the late 90's that sold a large majority of their products from their website. I worked at such a company, and it's still in business now. The key is that there wasn't a lot of wasteful spending, and it was based on a solid business model. It didn't have a big storefront in case the web sales failed, but it also didn't buy a lot of things it didn't really need, or hire people not required to just get by.

Re:About the Dot Bombs...

[Kalak]

iTMS is all about selling the iPods. It's more like the first category than any other. It's Apple, who has a generally successful business, adding another channel for the iPods, but indirectly.

Re:About the Dot Bombs...

[nine-times]

Funny, I was thinking of putting it in the third category. You know, [relatively] cheap content, and they support themselves by advertising [for their own product, the iPod].

You guys CAN slow down the slide show

[L0phtpDK]

Look up top... see the blue bar with large Forbes log... ahh what is this next to it? "Previous... Slower... ah ha!" I am no medical genious, but I beleive that this button may make the slide show move slower.

Re:You guys CAN slow down the slide show

[brianconnolly]

seems this one is full of people who half-RTFA but once the pictures started their jaw slacked and the corners of their mouths crusted with dried saliva.

Re:You guys CAN slow down the slide show

[Crash24]

I am no medical genious, but I beleive that this button may make the slide show move slower.

I would prefer the arcane "Next" button. Of course, I'm certain that Forbes has never heard of such a thing...

Re:You guys CAN slow down the slide show

[Tired_Blood]

"Previous... Slower... ah ha!"

But you didn't get to the best part:
Previous... Slower... Stop... Faster...

Faster ?

Like adding a jet engine to a ferrari, when all you really need is a bicycle.

Re:You guys CAN slow down the slide show

[bStrom]

Maybe the "Faster" button is to speed it up after overuse of the "Slower" button?

Re:You guys CAN slow down the slide show

[Anonymous Coward]

You're no spelling genius, either.

Re:You guys CAN slow down the slide show

[Tired_Blood]

True, I was more or less making a joke.

But really... Faster/Slower: the use of a slideshow feature is inappropriate here.

Slideshows should be used as a way to display info without user interaction. In this case, however, most of the info is out of view when the page loads (requiring the user to scroll down and take time to read the paragraphs of info). Also, very few people can read 20 words/second.

That is, unless they expected most of their readers to just look at the pictures and ignore Forbes' reasons for including these specific examples. Somehow I doubt that, but the only other reason for including a slideshow is that a coder wanted to play with their new toy (I would definitely understand that one).

Anyway, had they used a simple "next" "previous" setup, we wouldn't be reading about frustrations with the slideshow - the ferrari vs bicycle comment I made.

Re:You guys CAN slow down the slide show

[bStrom]

I know - I was just being an ass.

slightly off topic

[blackmonday]

A bunch of radio stations in LA are running Super Bowl contests, but they can't use the term "Super Bowl". They have to call it The Big Game or something to that effect.

What's up with that?

Re:slightly off topic

[AtariAmarok]

"A bunch of radio stations in LA are running Super Bowl contests, but they can't use the term "Super Bowl". They have to call it The Big Game or something to that effect"

I'm pretty sure that the case is, any time someone has some promotion tied to the Superbowl, they have to pay for it.

It seems to go beyond that, however. I recall a "Green Lantern" comic years ago in which the plot involved the Super Bowl. It was called "The Bowl" through the entire thing. I guess they want to be paid for stories about the Superbowl too.

Re:slightly off topic

[brianconnolly]

the more apparent explanation is that a stipend must be paid to EA everytime anything NFL related is uttered in public.

Re:slightly off topic

[AtariAmarok]

I'd quote you, but I don't want to pay $699 to EA.

Re:slightly off topic

[Politburo]

Super Bowl is a trademark. You have to pay the NFL to use it.

Sad but true.

Re:slightly off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

A bunch of radio stations in LA are running Super Bowl contests, but they can't use the term "Super Bowl". They have to call it The Big Game or something to that effect.

What's up with that?

Holy shit! Jerry Seinfeld posts on Slashdot!

Speaking of SuperBowl commercials...

[antdude]

Detroit News Online's article says Budweiser's 'Malfunction' explainer advertisement won't air. What's sure to be one of the most talked-about television commercials created for Super Bowl XXXIX won't air game day.

Anheuser-Busch, the largest advertiser with 10 of the 30-second ad slots on Fox's Feb. 6 broadcast, produced a humorous spot that purports to show what really caused Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" in last year's Super Bowl halftime on CBS.

From my AQFL site.

Unfortunately, Spot's not dead yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the PetsMart sock puppet dog (Spot, iirc) is now doing spots for 1-800-BAR-NONE.

Has it really changed at all?

[Spy der Mann]

Look at all the banner ads and popups in webpages. Those pay-per-click advertisements.

People in these online businesses still have no freaking idea of how the web works.. the heck! how a business works!

They failed in the .com bubble, and i predict there will be the pay-per-click bubble, too.

Re:Has it really changed at all?

[Stormwatch]

> Look at all the banner ads and popups in webpages.

Pop-ups? Where? You mean.. there are still people out there dumb enough to get online with a browser with no pop-up blocking?

My Favorite

[Seanasy]

Cat Herding

Re:My Favorite

[shawn(at)fsu]

Those commercials make my life so much easier. When someone asks who I work for and I say EDS, they always ask who are they. I just say remeber the cat hearding commercials, and that satifies them.

Not the full ads...

[John3]

Too bad they only are showing little snippets of the ads. I would have liked to see the full ads...for those who are seeing them for the first time it's tough to figure out some of the commercials. For example, the eTrade monkey ad with the "Deliverance" guys clapping along wasn't really funny until you saw the ending tagline "Well, we just blew $3 million dollars". In fact, with that tagline it's even funnier now. :-)

There are a few more classic eTrade commercials here (bottom of the article), including the "Money coming out the wazoo" ad.

Re:Not the full ads...

[drew]

i think the "money coming out the wazoo" ad was one of my favorite ever. except maybe the salmon comercial with the guy karate fighting the bear.

Advertising perspective

[Lord_Dweomer]

Let me explain something to slashdotters about buying time in the Superbowl from an advertising perspective (yes, I'm in the industry). The Superbowl is expensive as hell, I believe current 30 sec. slots go for 2.4 mil. Unless you are a BIG company with that kind of money to toss around, you should NOT be in the Superbowl unless you are ready to risk it all.

Reading AdAge (industry publication) it is interesting to see that most of the spots that the companies are going to be airing are not product related spots, but rather branding spots. These are designed to increase your awareness of the brand, and to make you remember the company more. Branding of that scale is usually only best for companies that have an established foot print in the market place, and that have a customerbase who is already aware of their products.

Once you think about that for a bit, it is pretty obvious how foolish it was of the dotcoms to advertise during the Superbowl. Although I'm sure the media buyers and sellers that took part were MORE than happy to collect those commissions.

Re:Advertising perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

and dont forget to buy at the last minute cause the price fallsthrough the floor.
.

Re:Advertising perspective

[t_allardyce]

I really don't understand this whole branding crap, I know what brands I like and don't like already, show me 24 hours worth of pepsi adverts and im still going to buy coke, my choice of where to shop or eat is based solely on where i currently am and what I already like. When I buy new shoes, I only buy the pair that I think look best, not Nike or Reebok: the pair that I think look best. I don't buy a car, gadget or computer because I like the brand, I buy it because of the price and the review. One thing however is more certain than anything else: if i was in charge of the IT system of a large company, I wouldn't by Cisco or IBM just because I 'remembered' their brands, but the fact that they had stuck their brand our their might make me feel safer with them than with Bobs-Network-Solutions even though I would be fully evaluating all possibilities.

Re:Advertising perspective

[Kiryat Malachi]

Read "No Logo" (Naomi Klein), then understand exactly why you aren't the target audience for branding.

Re:Advertising perspective

[nine-times]

One thing however is more certain than anything else: if i was in charge of the IT system of a large company, I wouldn't by Cisco or IBM just because I 'remembered' their brands, but the fact that they had stuck their brand our their might make me feel safer with them than with Bobs-Network-Solutions even though I would be fully evaluating all possibilities.

Yeah, well, guess what? That's what branding is about. It's not about "remembering" the brand, it's about the fact that IBM and Cisco make you *feel* "safer". I can't stress "feel" enough. _*FEEL*_

When you're advertising, you want people to be familiar with your product. You want them to remember your company and the product. But the theory of advertising today is that the "holy grail" of advertising is to create an emotional attachment to the brand. Ultimately, it's feeling happy or excited or responsible or safe that sells products. It's not knowledge or beliefs. It's FEELINGS.

Re:Advertising perspective

[YrWrstNtmr]

Exactly.

"How did this ad make you feel?"
Happy
Sad
Lonely
etc...
is almost word for word one of the evaluations they use in writing and testing new ads.

Word for word.

Re:Advertising perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

I found it interesting that when you had to pick a couple sneaker companies to use as examples, you pulled Nike and Reebok out of the air. You probably didn't even have to think about it. And those are the #1 and #2 marketed brands in the world.

Yeah, that whole branding concept is a bunch of BS. All it does is make people associate company names with generic products like "shoes".

Re:Advertising perspective

[angryelephant]

So you are pretty much saying the goal of marketing is to seperate consumers from rational thought regarding your product. I really think all you guys should be lined up against a wall and shot. I could make a decent arguement that a lot of the things that are wrong with America are due to this philosophy of advertising.

Re:Advertising perspective

[TheWizardOfCheese]

[...] Branding of that scale is usually only best for companies that have an established foot print in the market place, and that have a customerbase who is already aware of their products.

Once you think about that for a bit, it is pretty obvious how foolish it was of the dotcoms to advertise during the Superbowl. [...]

You have seen the trees but not the forest. During the bubble, Nortel ran endless branding ads. Why? Individual consumers did not buy their products. No, but they did buy their stock.

Once you consider that the true product of snakeoil.com is not snake oil, but SnakeOil stock, the picture snaps into focus. Advertising during the superbowl may have been unethical, it may have been bad timing, and it may have been unlucky, but it was not necessarily foolish.

Re:Advertising perspective

[nine-times]

So you are pretty much saying the goal of marketing is to separate consumers from rational thought regarding your product.

Yes, That's the goal that ad agencies set for themselves these days. Take a look at a coffee ad from the 50's. They'll show you a cup of coffee and tell you "Our brand has a deeper, richer flavor than our competitors."

Now look at a coffee commercial today. It'll show a couple sipping coffee, having a charming little romantic conversation. You won't see the coffee, you'll just see that the couple's drinking out of coffee cups. Nowhere in the commercial will it say anything about the coffee tasting good.

Around 20 years ago (I guess), advertisers started studying what inspired "brand loyalty" of the kind Apple enjoys today. They compared this brand loyalty to methods used by popular religions and successful cults (successful in creating devout followers, but including suicide cults). A pattern emerged.

The trick, apparently, is to try to get your marketing to do several things at once. Among them:

1. Make people familiar with your product and brand. Make an impression, and make it memorable. It's not so important that they know anything *specific* about your product, though-- knowing it's name is almost enough.
2. Create the impression of an appealing subculture. Present yourself as part of an oppressed minority, filled with misunderstood individuals who are cool or interesting or moral, or generally in some way "better" than the "masses".
3. Present your group (brand/religion/cult) as exclusive gate-keepers into this subculture. Basically, you're not "one of us" unless you own a Mac, or run Linux, or shop at the GAP, or drink Starbucks' coffee, or kill yourself drinking poisoned Kool-Aid (depending on the group).

If you can get people hooked on an appealing subculture, large numbers of those people will do some silly things to enter into that subculture, or even just to maintain their status as a "real" member. People will exhibit a general tendency to wear/eat/buy whatever is dictated by that subculture. Advertisers can then tap into this subculture whenever they want to tell you what to wear or where to hang out or what to eat (or whatever).

Oh brave new world with such people in it!

I really think all you guys should be lined up against a wall and shot.

What did I do? I'm just a helpdesk manager.

I could make a decent arguement that a lot of the things that are wrong with America are due to this philosophy of advertising.

I'd like to place at least some of the blame on the people who fall for it. This method wouldn't exist if it weren't so effective. And don't be too quick to think that you're so immune. You just might be so integrated into your advertisement prescribed subculture that you think your subculture is "normal".

Re:Advertising perspective

[nine-times]

I wanted to add that, if you don't believe what I've said, look around more closely. If you look at big companies with popular products, you'll notice that their commercials are usually all focussed on branding, and not the product.

Look at McDonalds. Their ad campaigns don't focus around the food. They're about showing people having fun and slogans like "I'm lovin' it" and "We love to see you smile". Budweiser puts on commercials about frogs. Do Gatoraid commercials usually give you evidence or an argument that their drink is the best thing for athletes, or does it just show intense athletes dripping with the stuff. Does Coca Cola try to explain why it's a good drink, or is it usually about young people having fun, and they happen to have a coke in there somehow.

Look at the recent microsoft commercials, where they do the chalk drawings over video of normal people going to school and such. The whole message is "Microsoft cares about you, and believes in your potential!" Really, does that say ANYTHING about Microsoft's products? No.

Advertising these days is all about creating positive emotional attachment to brands.

Re:Advertising perspective

[t_allardyce]

yes but that only works for this case, if were talking about drinks etc then im going to go on taste alone, and unless your particular drink is totally unknown to the world its not going to change my mind - infact even if a drinks brand did catch my eye, i would still only buy it if i actually saw it on the shelf.

Re:Advertising perspective

[t_allardyce]

Yes, i picked those two because they were big, but, while i see nike adverts all the time, i havn't seen a reebok advert in this country for years. Either way, when im in the shop nike and reebok mean nothing, if i thing a shoe looks totally gay im not gonna buy it, and usually only about 5 shoes in a shop look normal enough to buy..

Re:Advertising perspective

[angryelephant]

My mistake for thinking you were on of these advertisers.

You are probably right that I'm not immune. Its a big reason I stopped watching TV. I didn't like being repeatedly told that I had to buy things to live a good life.

Re:Advertising perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertising perspective (Score: 5, Obvious)
by Lord_Dweebier (648696) on 2005-01-28 11:41 (#11506815)

Re:Please Forbes....

[Leo McGarry]

You'd suggest what instead?

Stupid me

[Tablizer]

During the dot-com heyday, many of us secretly agreed that it would probably mostly crash and burn one day. Even a co-inventor of the Internet was predicting a crash. I once lightly entertained the idea of making screenshots of some of the more extreme sites with their wacky melted-plastic punk look as kind of a dot-com scrap book.

If I had bothered to go through with the idea, then I could have created a "Dot-com memory lane" website that would have pretty good traffic in which I could sell ad space.

I can just slap myself for not going through with it.

Re:Stupid me

[t_allardyce]

I remember predicting it wouldn't last too, it was just a gold rush for the few viable business ideas, the trouble was all the stupid PHB investors had no idea what it was all about and just pumped millions into it assuming it was the next biggest thing. 'gotta invest in a dot com' - Im no economics expert, but I don't see why most of these companies needed more than about $20,000 to get off to a decent start, also why anyone would need a separate net shop for separate things - amazon for example does well because they sell everything to anyone, anywhere, theres not really room in the world for more than a few giants like that.. anyone who wasted millions and lost deserved their stupidity.

Re:Stupid me

[Tablizer]

the trouble was all the stupid PHB investors had no idea what it was all about and just pumped millions into it assuming it was the next biggest thing. 'gotta invest in a dot com'

Some of them thought it smelled fishy, but people who questioned it were actually getting fired in some cases. There was a financial institution that fired a bearish analyst for "not getting it" that made the news. Anybody remember?

It is kind of like OOP: you go along with it because you don't want to be seen as the non-getter :-)

Re:Stupid me

[bigberk]

I remember predicting it wouldn't last too, it was just a gold rush for the few viable business ideas

Next time you see that happening, run, don't walk here (by the way, I'm seeing a bubble again right now...)

Trademark Issue

[ashitaka]

Like the little British Columbia bakery who have been "Olympic Bakers" forever being forced to change their name before 2010 by the IOC.

Re:Trademark Issue

[jesseraf]

My friend live on Olympic St. in Vancouver...wonder if they'll force the city to change the street's name.

Re:Trademark Issue

[ashitaka]

Knowing how anal the IOC has been on this issue I wouldn't be surprised.

Ultimate Marketing Technique

[Greyfox]

All that marketing didn't bring them much name recognition at all. If you want to remain the talk of the town for YEARS after your commercial, just fund a Janet Jackson nipple slip. Instead of the EDS herding cats commercial, they could have just stuck an big EDS sticker over Janet's errant nipple and they'd have been the talk of the town for YEARS! Yes, I forsee a time when nipple real estate is the most coveted... what? It already is? Damn, and I was going to patent the idea...

Web site with funny commercials

[imuffin]

I thought I'd put together a site full of funny web commercials similar to what Ad Critic was a few years ago before they went out of business. This is a bit of a rough draft. The site interface still needs some work, and I plan to add a voting/rating script as well as a discussion script for each ad.

I'm also going to record the entire Superbowl on Sunday and hope to have all of those ads up by the following Monday. The ones I have up right now were recorded from a TV show (silly overlay graphics and all) that TBS aired a few weeks ago called "The funniest commercials of 2004." Several of the commercials weren't actually from 2004, though.

Anyway if you like funny commercials, it's probably worth checking out because some of them are really funny.

Re:Web site with funny commercials

[omahajim]

Busted a gut. Thanks for the laugh today. Sorry, blew my mod points yesteday ;-(

TROLL!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on! "crack-headed business ideas"?

ahh well

[hyperstation]

here in my office, with our aeron chairs and air hockey, it almost feels like 1999....except for the not turning a profit part.

Re:ahh well

[Humorously_Inept]

High five for the Herman Miller crew! Woo hoo. When my employer moved buildings we left the soda fountain, one-cup coffee brewing machine, and fooseball table behind. At least we've got really good chairs...

The Sock Puppet offended me!

[Saeger]

Personally, I thought that the Pets.com Sock Puppet was very offensive; it was obviously possessed by evil demon-seed and scared my innocent children half to death! All good christians know that socks are used for dirty masturbatory purposes and can cum to life!

Anyway, I am glad that this upcoming G-Rated SuperBowl wouldn't allow such a dirty puppet on-air! They even renamed the "Best Damn Sports Show Period" to the "The Best DARN Sports Show Period". God bless their hearts.

Re:The Sock Puppet offended me!

[game kid]

Personally, I thought that the Pets.com Sock Puppet was very offensive; it was obviously possessed by evil demon-seed and scared my innocent children half to death! All good christians know that socks are used for dirty masturbatory purposes and can cum to life!

God that's hilarious...what am I saying?!? I LOVE teh puppet! Sock-puppet dogs are awesome.

get it right, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Properly normalized /. canonical for would be:

"Don't forget to pay your $699 EA licensing fee, you cocksmoking teabaggers!"

But then, I'm a stickler for proper form.

Somebody should write a script to properly glob together all the /. cliches into the current ubercliche.

Not the VP!

[Wrexs0ul]

You mean to tell me Al Gore knew his invention was doomed to crash? What the hell?

-Matt

Sports Guy on ESPN.com Page 2

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're a fan check out:

http://www.sonsofthesportsguy.com/forum/index.php

Re:Sports Guy on ESPN.com Page 2

[cp4]

Don't know why you posted AC... love the Sports Guy and I'm sure a lot of other slashdotters do as well.... the site looks cool, if a bit bare bones.

If any mods are fans as well, mod parent up. If you aren't, well start reading the Sports Guy!

Sports Guy's World

so whats in the 2005 superbowl?

[peter303]

I'd guess there will be a fair number of goofy Budweiser and Pepsi commercials. Last year the controversy was election commercials- the moveOn.org stuff. I wonder if anyone would spoof the "wardrobe malfunction"?

Re:so whats in the 2005 superbowl?

[Reignking]

Bud had an spoofing it, but recently decided against it. Read about it here.

Re:so whats in the 2005 superbowl?

[Ahnteis]

Or watch it on budweiser's site.

Re:so whats in the 2005 superbowl?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok. I tried with Firefox, Mozilla, Safari and IE on my Mac. None worked. I suppose I need a PeeCee?

No wonder there are .bombs out there. I won't be going to their site again.

qz

The two best were ...

[one9nine]

tieclasp.com and pimentoloaf.com!

KSJO

[antizeus]

As far as I know, those motherless cocksuckers at ClearChannel had owned KSJO for quite some time before they changed the format. I used to listen to it around 1999 and knew then that it was a CC station. That was right around the time that I got sick of commercial radio.

Scroll

[siskbc]

Other than the speed control on the site, if you click and hold the scroll bar it won't update. Let go, it updates. That's in Firefox, dunno about IE.

Re:the bubble bowl? - WWJD? JWTYT STFU

[Anonymous Coward]

>Furthermore, please avoid the use of acronyms

WWJD? JWTYTSTFU

MacIntosh introduced in 1984 SuperBowl

[peter303]

The Apple Mac introduction is the most infamous techie & SuperBowl commercial. At the time people complained the commercial was too obscure, because it didnt show the product. Steve was secretive about the actual shape until the official introduction later in the year.

The 1985 commercial about the [ IBM ] suits marching off the cliff to their destruction was entertaining too.

Ads here...

[John3]

Found a site with many of the classic ads...including the full version of the monkey ad.

Gah!!!

[gstoddart]

"I'll sue your asses!" he shouts at them, "I'm not kidding! Ask the sock puppet!" and then the scene cuts to him having his way with the sock puppet while huffing, "Say my name! What's my name?! Say it! Say my name!"

Oh, thank you for searing that image into my friggin' head. That's very distressing.

Now, I need to clean tea from my keyboard and monitor. :-P

Sooner or later...

[madmaxmedia]

The one thing about Super Bowl advertising is that it is the only advertising that is an event unto itself (did I say that right?)

I think there is an opportunity for a new company to use the Super Bowl to launch something. I mean, you could buy a million cheap radio spots and technically reach the same number of people with less money, but not create nearly as much impact (at least that's my guess, I've never run an ad in the Super Bowl.) But more often, it's a bigger company that launches something new- the Mac, Crystal Pepsi, etc.

But you better have something big and memorable to match your ad venue, besides just the fact that you are running a Super Bowl ad (and that you created a really catchy or funny ad.) I think that these companies got confused- they thought just running a Super Bowl ad would instantly make them 'big time', even if they actually had nothing noteworthy to sell or promote. Another poster mentioned what happened after the Computers.com ad, I can't imagine how those guys felt after they generated almost none of the response they bet their farm on.

So, to summarize, here's the 4 step plan to become as rich as Bill Gates:
1. Develop something totally new and cool that people will need or crave.
2. Develop cool or funny TV commercial.
3. Advertise on the Super Bowl.
4. Watch the orders roll in!

Too bad everyone forgot step 1!

PHBallast

[Doc Ruby]

PHBs OK'd those fat salaries to underqualified HTML "programmers". Because they skimmed points of the top, from money they got from other PHBs who invested or bought services from overvalued PHBs. I had a lot of success in the Bubble, a geek who learned biz on the job, running a development consulting shop. We managed to avoid getting sandwiched between PHBs on top, and poser "programmers" below, and consistently profited off those who didn't. I left in 1998, my partners switched to the Bubble game, and popped along with the rest of the conmen in 2000. While I cashed out at the end of 1999. So yeah, it's the PHBs across the board, from the startups to the investors to the underwriting bank analysts. The geeks performed like champs in the Bubble, and the PHBs squandered it. Don't let them get away with passing on the blame, too.

Prick for Day

[Tablizer]

was selling Sun and other datacenter type equipment and man I'd go on a sales call, meet with a bunch of dorks with brand new BMW's while half the office is playing fooseball and they'd want two new E10K's ASAP.

One of these days somebody is going to make a pretty entertaining movie about the dot-com madness that includes the best of the late 90's music as a soundtrack. It is one of those things that happens once every century.

It was about 12 or so years after the end of the Vietnam war that all the 'Nam movies came out. Thus, expect some dot-com nastalgia movies around 2012 or so.

Re:Prick for Day

[aardwolf204]

Your looking for this documentary Dot Com. And yes, that movie bombed too.

Re:Prick for Day

[Tablizer]

Your looking for this documentary Dot Com. And yes, that movie bombed too.

There is another documentary called "startup.com". But documentaries are not really what I am talking about. I mean something that exaggerates the "dot-com feel" Hollywood style. It ain't a hit until Hollywood exaggerates it.

Re:Prick for Day

[Anonymous Coward]

actually startup.com was the documentary i was thinking about. and yeah your right about the hollywood style, that would be interesting. I could see something like Boiler Room.

What a Horrid Site

[Bob Uhl]

Dear God in Heaven, that has to be the worst article (not the summary, which I enjoyed) I have ever read. I read the intro blurb, and then look aroudn for a button reading 'more' or 'next' or 'this way to the egress.' Only after mistakenly following another link do I discover that it's the ad-banner-shaped JPEG. Yeah, guys: hide a navigation device the one place any web reader ignores by default.

Then the slideshow starts, and I glance away at my other box to do some more work--only to discover that it's done. It automatically changes slides, unlike every other gallery and in fact site on the Internet, which lets one choose when to change pages. Peeved, I click 'previous' a dozen times (they don't give one a 'first' button), then quickly hit 'stop' (yeah, thanks for making me work at this, forbes.com). I read the first slide, chuckle and hit 'next.' The next slide appears, and as I'm reading it, it changes: they don't remember that one wants the show to be stopped!

What sort of microcephalic twit would think this is a good browsing experience?

Re:What a Horrid Site

[djeaux]

What sort of microcephalic twit would think this is a good browsing experience?

I betcha that twit reads /. And I betcha Forbes pays that twit more than the average /.er makes. ;-)

Re:What a Horrid Site

[DrDebug]

I was merrily following the link to the slideshow, when I discovered that I needed to install the RealPlayer plugin. That ended that quest.

Realplayer is known for it's spyware and other system pollution. I will never put Realplayer product on a system ever again.

Re:What a Horrid Site

[eraserewind]

No doubt that Real sucked in the past, but Real player is now open source. You can change it how you like.

there are ALWAYS opportunities

[Anonymous Coward]

ahh, the dot com disaster. my claim to fame was leveraging a $50 put that nobody thought i'd ever exercise into several thousand dollars.

i didn't come here to brag, I came here to help you -- that's right, YOU who is brave enough to read below +1

go read up on the options market and see if you can't find techs today that might be worth, playing with. Even when the market is in a downturn, there is money to be made.

I'm still waiting for my iOpener

[cvd6262]

I loved the Netpliance "everyone can be a geek" commerical in 99. Too bad they left the IDE ports on their internet appliace and most people just hacked it into a cheap computer (a la X-Box).

Then they refused delivery unless customers signed a post hoc TSA, which led to BBB complaints. Anyway, I wonder whatever happened to those guys.

No...Michael Sims...Ad Sites...Kick backs...

[Anonymous Coward]

He posts the links within bullshit "stories" (it's the only type he's capable of) so that thousands of /. readers visit the site...

Think Roland Piquepaille and Engadget. Think any fucking thing Micahel ever posts, the cocksucker.

Not the only place doing work for them.

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at a company that was providing part of the technology driving that website. We had a few people watching the game on TV in the data center in case something happened. Two months of testing went into ensuring we could handle the load they were projecting.

I'm not sure I'm able to comment on the number of users they actually got but lets just say it was more of a hockey score than a basketball score.

MOD DOWN--THE BUS IS LYING

[Anonymous Coward]

As PCM2 points out, there are plenty of "noun" Dot Coms (such as Drugstore.com) still around. I didn't check the rest of his information, but it's probably inaccurate as well.

Forbes' short memory

[amightywind]

I find it interesting that Forbes casts the dotcom bubble in such a negative light when at the time they were the formost cheerleader of the worst episode corporate corruption in 60 years. No hypocracy there.

Re:Forbes' short memory

[bigberk]

You think they want to make themselves look stupid? All these financial dweebs were cheering on the way up. Part of that is being foolish, the other part is convincing the investing public to throw more cash into the game. Then it all comes tumbling down, and it's so obvious in retrospect, and they are so wise for analyzing it. Rinse and repeat.

of course it's worse in IE than Firefox . . .

[MexicanMenace]

IE doesn't have Adblock and a by-default pop-up blocker. :D

They're out there... and not so different from you

[7grain]

100% guarantee that some of the programmers and technical folks from these companies are avid slashdot readers. I personally was introduced to Slashdot in 2001 from a coworker who was a former java programmer at Lifeminders.com, here in VA. Hmm, come to think of it, we both got laid off from that company, too.

In an interesting twist, the company that I work for now briefly occupied one floor of the bulding that Lifeminders used to occupy. It had all the trappings of a 1999 dot-com company. Beautiful space, all wood-and-glass, and warehouse-style ceilings with halogen spotlight bulbs. We purchased some of that furniture when we left that space; I'm sitting right now on a Herman Miller Aeron chair formerly occupied by a lifeminders.com tushie. Gosh darn these are comfortable chairs.

Cheers. And this officially pops my Slashdot cherry - my first post.

People do you have no life????

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is this shit? 5 year old ads from internet silly time aka the bubble? You're the same fuckers that are going to start your stories with "When I was a little boy..." in 10 years. Get a life. Guess what. It ain't news. It doesn't matter, and it doesn't belong on /.

Sounds like...

[schon]

... management thought that real-world advertising worked the same way they were told banner advertising worked.

Ford or Coke don't expect people to instantly stop what they're doing and go buy a truck or vanilla soda when they see their advertisement. I wonder why management thought your company was different?

And now we use hi-tech to watch the ads

[btempleton]

So there is one legacy.

For 3 years, I've held a superbowl commercials party, where we gather, go for a hike, and 2 hours into game-time watch the show on a hard disk video recorder. We play the football super-fast (you can still follow it, it's pretty exciting) and slow down to watch the commercials, the inverse of the rest of the year.

This year it will be in HDTV thanks to MythTV. More popular than anybody's football watching superbowl party I know.

Re:Please Forbes....

[Anonymous Coward]

Get with the times and ditch Real video.

Something hot and hip and just a tad retro, like ascii

poop

[Anonymous Coward]

Its time to take the Browns to the Super Bowl. ...and I'm not talking about football ;-)

Mod Parent UP

[Anonymous Coward]

"all you guys should be lined up against a wall and shot. I could make a decent arguement that a lot of the things that are wrong with America are due to this philosophy of advertising."

True and concise

No need

[mackermacker]

No need, we already have Fu**edcompanies.com

Mod parent up!

[khallow]

I agree with this post wholeheartedly. How else can you explain companies that couldn't turn a profit or make a decent business plan, yet had ambitions to become the next Microsoft or Netscape? Ie, why hype how much your business is going to grow, hire dozens or hundreds of people, and promote oodles of people to "vice president"? It's all about presenting an image of a company poised to explode upon the business world and generate huge profits at some ill-defined but not too distant future, exactly what many gullible investors wanted to see.

For those missing the pets.com sock puppet...

[mwooldri]

... I believe that it got resurrected by 1-800-BAR-NONE - a car finance company for those who have difficulty getting regular financing for a car. At least I see that "thing" on TV from time to time. Mark.

GoDaddy.com Super Bowl ad info from the owner

[Rescate]

Bob Parsons, the owner of GoDaddy.com, posted info on his blog about taking out a Super Bowl ad. Cost of 30 seconds is $2.4 million, with about an extra million in production costs. But, unlike some of the tech companies advertising in the 2000 Super Bowl, it sounds like this cost will not be a problem for them even if the ad is not very successful. Here are some excerpts from the post:

Now, some facts about Go Daddy:

-- snip --

5. Go Daddy has no debt and no equipment leases. Except for the monthly rent we pay for our buildings (which we made the decision to lease), the company has no debt service or lease payments.
6. Our sales this year were over $100 million. If we do nothing different (other than continue to promote our business the way we have been) our sales for 2005 should be about $170 million.
7. The company will continue to have substantial cash reserves even after paying for the Super Bowl ad.

-- snip --

Here's the answers to some questions I've been asked by reporters and others, since it became known that Go Daddy is going to have a Super Bowl ad:

Q. How do you know that the Super Bowl ad will work for Go Daddy?
A. There are no guarantees. I don't know if it will work.

Q. Is the Super Bow ad a one shot deal?
A. Not really. We will be following up our Super Bowl ad with an extensive advertising campaign that will embrace television, radio and print.

Q. Do you expect to earn your investment back?
A. Not immediately and maybe never. What the Super Bowl ad will do is to lay the ground work for better recognition of our follow up campaign.

Q. What if the Super Bowl ad doesn't work at all? What will happen to Go Daddy?
A. You can be sure that I certainly want to see it work, but if it doesn't work at all we'll be just fine. The entire ad production costs and airtime have been paid for out of cash reserves earned last year. Many company owners would have taken this cash out of the company for themselves as a dividend. Not me. (What follows is the line that was misquoted by Brand Autopsy) I'd rather have a Super Bowl ad.

Also, Tuesday Morning Quarterback

[rynthetyn]

If you like obscure trivia, rants about bad science in movies, reader haiku, and weekly complaints of inconsistencies in the Star Trek universe mixed in with your football, then Tuesday Morning Quarterback is the football column that every good football loving slashdotter should read.

Or, maybe I'm just singing the praises of his column because I like it that he printed my haiku pointing out that the temperature of space is not actually absolute zero (how many football columns would even get on to that subject in the first place?).

HAHAHAH

[Anonymous Coward]

The comment was at +4.

Then three people pointed out that the information was not only nonsense, but ridiculously easy to discount. Yet after all that, the comment is now at +5.

And people wonder why Linux hasn't taken over the desktop arena yet. It's because an ignorant few in the communistic meme of Open Source decide what's right and what's wrong for everyone else, while at the same time disregarding easily available facts and logic.

What is the reason for Open Source's failure?

Look in the mirror.

TRY ACTUALLY READING THE COMMENTS...

[Anonymous Coward]

...before you reply. Your information would've been interesting if it hadn't been posted 3 times before.

Unfortunately your comment proves that you're a dumbass and will never have sex with a female weighing under 265 pounds.

Reality

[Anonymous Coward]

At many college campuses across the country, this is still not only a reality, but in fact the only way many students order their delivery food. Check campusfood.com.

i forget...

[torrents]

was that the "good old days" or the "bad old days", either way they were amusing times...