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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?