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Dot-com Boom's Biggest Duds, From Flooz to iSmell
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "WSJ.com looks back on some of the boom's biggest busts, and catches up with once-optimistic inventors. A creator of the unfortunately named iSmell, a USB device meant to 'print' smells transmitted by websites or videogames, says, 'It was a heartbreaking experience, because we had put so much into it.' The digital currency known as Flooz crashed and burned when a ring of thieves defrauded the company out of $300,000 using stolen credit cards. Microsoft flushed iLoo down the crapper. CueCat, meanwhile, got a second life as a bar-code reader that doesn't pick up personal information. 'The cat got butchered, but it has spawned a cottage industry,' says the device's inventor."
so how many people had like 45 of those things?
Is there a way to get to the actual article without the extremely annoying shenanigans they insist on putting me through?
iSmell? I thought that was the smelloscope, able to smell anything from far away in the galaxy....come to think of it, i dont think it will be invented for another 1000 years, give or take a few (thanks professor farnsworth!)
How can they forget Boo.com? The way that management team burned money epitomized the dotcom era. It wasn't surprising at all that their site was an obnoxious, pretentious, bloated piece of junk. The good thing about the bust was that it shook out and humbled all these artsy "we know what's best for the user" types that ran Boo.com.
I miss the days when new product announcements read like jokes and saying "the Internet will make bricks and mortar obsolete" wasn't a joke. Now the best we've got is "Oh look, Google made a calendar that works with your email."
There was also a company started during the dotcom boom which delivered candy right to your front door (The name eludes me). Only problem was that consumers were using it to buy single bars of candy, and the shipping costed to much for the company to stay alive. A good idea though. Reminds me of when I could order groceries online, but that was cancelled due to the lack of popularity. I suppose America isn't ready to take the final step to pure laziness.
Slashdot, the only place where intellectuals can act like idiots... and still sound intellectual.
any list of tech duds that doesn't include the venerable iOpener is.. well, incomplete.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I actually miss PointCast, particularly the screensaver featuring live data that was pushed to it. Most of the other features of PointCast are easily found in any number of RSS readers these days... but I have yet to find an RSS screensaver as functional as the PointCast screensaver.
PointCast was just ahead of it's time... it really needed the always-on high speed home connections that only really became widespread years after it went under.
Pets.com, and Webvan.
Priceline almost went bust - remember how they used to sell all sorts of stuff, including groceries at Jewel grocery stores.
(Side note: I wonder what the going rate for jewel.com is. But I digress.)
And frankly, I can't believe Peapod is still running.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
I still have that very issue of Wired Magazine that the iSmell was publisized in from like 6 years ago.. I remember being so fond of it because (if i remember porperly) it was a Spumco project. And I wanted so badly for that to become a reality. Viva la Spumco!!!! (and Ren and Stimpy too)
A foul up at the iSmell datacenter led every customers device to smell like Uranus.
These guys are penny ante losers. I want to know the REALLY BIG losers.
I remember seeing some TV show back around 1992, some analysts from Bolt Beranek & Newman said they had a bet in their office about what company would be the first to lose $1 Billion in cash by investing it in the Internet. He called it by some stupid name like "a Gigalapse."
I've remembered that bet for quite a few years, and whenever I hear a big loss, I always see if it comes up to a billion. I've seen a few companies lose hundreds of millions, but nobody's come close to a billion that I know of. But surely it will happen someday, sooner than we think. For all we know, Microsoft or Google might have lost a billion in some bad internet investment and buried it somewhere in their P&L where nobody is looking.
They also forgot Value America. Similar to the CyberRebate.com which was mentioned in the article, except even less thought through than that... they pretty much gave stuff away for practically nothing. I can't even describe how much cheap stuff I got from them at half price or less.
Value America was a textbook case of the dot bomb. Literally... the book "dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath" describes the rise and fall of Value America.
Time Warner. They bought AOL and never looked forward since.
Kozmo was profitable exactly where you think it would be (dense cities like NYC, Boston and SF). They tried to expand, too fast, to places that were too spread out (LA, Houston, etc). It was a rad service while it lasted, though.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
The iloo was a joke that became an urban legend. There was never actually a plan to make such a thing.
How ya like dat?
Kozmo com was too limited. You need a site where anything is possible! You need Zombo com.
How ya like dat?
You can still get $5 sandwiches delivered in 30 minutes or less from Ninja Burger.
Why bother with a tiny little article from WSJ when you have an entire website dedicated to dot-bomb companies? FuckedCompany.com was a big hit during the dot-bomb era, everyone I knew used the site to make bets on which company would get screwed next. They should be the ones authoring the story. They probably have all the great insider information on all the dot-bombs. If it weren't for NDAs, they could probably publish a top selling book with all that rumor-mill information they've got stored away.
I... I still do that...
Ever get the feeling that the people who don't have anything to say are the ones doing the majority of the talking?
what the fuck is an 'ipod' what a silly name it'll never sell
?giS
Online grocery ordering and delivery is doing quite well in the UK still. Though its generally provided by the existing companies off the back of their own stores, rather than new enterprises (maybe except for Waitrose, who are closely linked with a separate delivery company).
I worked for Sprockets.com for a couple months as technical support while I learned web development elsewhere.
As best I could tell, Sprockets was completely fake. The goal was to build a new-media friendly collaboration tool. Emphasis was on appearance and real development work was outsourced to Israeli programmers who could barely keep up with...well they just sucked. I never saw a deliverable and never had any responsibilities.
We had four in-house developers, fresh college kids who mostly goofed around and laughed at their non-responsibilities. When I showed up to work at 11am, the infrastructure team bluntly offered me a free cellphone. They also threw stock at me like toilet paper.
I bailed on Sprockets to take a real development job at double salary, but about a year later I got a letter in the mail saying Sprockets was defunct and I could come to the office to take whatever I wanted. Fait accompli...venture capital=profit. I can't believe they got away with it, but my feeling is this was pre-planned from the start and they broke no actual laws. They knew what they were doing.
Call it VC raiding. Anybody who wasted venture capital should probably be jealous (and my future employer did exactly that.)
It should be noted that this minor "cottage industry" success appeared despite efforts to the contrary by Mr. Philyaw (or whatever name he calls himself now or the future). Referring to the device as "butchered" is telling.
As an aside, it's interesting that he now operates a "patent holding company" and changed his name. Even more so is his choice of name. The guy's a class act all the way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com
"1990s. Boo.com's intention was to sell branded fashion wear over the Internet; however, after spending vast sums of its venture capital, it eventually had to liquidate and was placed into receivership on May 18, 2000. Fashionmall.com now owns boo.com."
Enough said?
if someone calls a product "iSmell" then I Smell a Really Bad Sense for Business.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
Also, the grandparent post is technically inaccurate -- AOL bought Time Warner, not the other way around.
It's not that I'm lazy, I just find going to the supermarket a frustrating, inefficient and depressing experience. Perhaps the original idea was just ahead of it's time?
If the iLoo and the iSmell people had got together they would have created a right old stink. This has to be a joke, right? It reminds me of the time I first marvelled at the ability to take my mobile phone into the crapper, then thought better of it.
cyberrebate.com - "Distributions to creditors (including rebate claimants) are being mailed beginning April 22, 2005. Creditors will receive $.08802 per dollar of allowed claims" The check is in the mail!!
pets.com - Bounces you to petsmart.com. Wonder how much PetsMart had to pay for the DNS rights? I'm guessing 2 barks and a milkbone.
webvan.com - DNS error. Legend has it this company actually burned through $1 billion.
peapod.com - Still alive in ChiTown, Milwaukee, and SE Wisco. Go peapod!!
carsdirect.com - Still alive but appears to be simply a car dealer referral service, not the once vaunted "direct seller". Never hit that sweet IPO - it was withdrawn as the bubble burst.
imotors.com - They built small factories to refurbish and re-warranty used cars which were delivered to customers. The factories are gone - now they're just an information broker apparently.
flooz.com - WTF? Random placeholder page?
boo.com - A splash page lives on and claims a new site is launching in 2006. Register your email address to receive updates. "The boo is back! Shh..." Oh joy!
kozmo.com - DNS error.
priceline.com - Still around of course.
agillion.com - Essentially blank page save the link to blogger.com
sprockets.com - Now a musical composing, scoring, and production service.
cuecat.com - An online obituary. Are they hoping this gets search-engine-indexed into posterity?
i2 - Supply chain software. Still here, but stock price is at $17, down from the 5-year high of $643. Look out below!
eToys - Still around.
idealab - Famous incubator - carsdirect, petsmart.com, etoys, etc - still around.
eCompanies - Famous incubator - still around.
Man, I was gonna laugh at this but my pedantic side got the best of me and I just can't do it.
CH4, or methane, is odorless. If you are "smelling" methane, then what you are really smelling is one of two things: H2S (rotton eggs) or Mercaptins.
They add mercaptins to CH4 (or natural gas) so you can smell it. Easy leak detection and all...
I think I personally like CNET's list more:
1. Webvan
2. Pets.com
3. Kozmo.com
4. Flooz.com
5. eToys.com
6. Boo.com
7. MVP.com
8. Go.com
9. Kibu.com
10. GovWorks.com
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Now that was one of my favorites. You had this little advertizement bar that appeared on the bottom of your screen, and got paid for however many hours it was up. Nevermind that you could run it at night while you slept. You also got additional cash for getting others to sign up under you. My roomate and I put together a little program we called 'TakeAdvantage' that was basically a small gui for breaking what pathetic blocks they put in place to prevent one person from signing themselves up 20 times. hundred dollar checks every month for nothing? Sweet. Whatshotnow was another great one. You got points for filling out surveys, and you could use those points on free junk at their website. Ghostmouse let you fill out surveys (everything is awesome!) for hours at a time while you slept or were at class. I'll never understand how they thought these business models could work. Ditto that with the 'new' Napster.
The Best of the Worst
By KATHERINE MEYER
May 3, 2006
What were they thinking?
The Internet spawned so many weird gizmos and bad business ideas that mocking dot-com duds became something of a sport in the post-bubble era. But some ideas still stand out for pure silliness. These are products and services that attracted lots of publicity -- and, in some cases, millions of dollars in funding -- before folding.
In the earlier days of the Web, "nobody seemed to care if there was a real business there," said Alan Meckler, chief executive of Jupitermedia Corp. and Internet industry pundit.
If It Seems Too Good to Be True
Take CyberRebate.com, which thought it could make money by giving stuff away for free. The online retailer, founded in 1998, sold an assortment of goods at heavily marked up prices (some items going for up to 10 times their retail values), but promised customers a hefty rebate that often amounted to 100% of the purchase price.
For example, CyberRebate charged about $1,100 for a 13-inch RCA television that normally retailed for a few hundred dollars. Buyers could get a full refund of the purchase price as long as they jumped through some hoops -- rebate forms had to be submitted by a deadline, and checks came 10 to 14 weeks later. CyberRebate banked on the idea that some percentage of buyers would forget to fill out the rebate form, or fail to do so in time, leaving the company to pocket the money.
But selling items at such wildly inflated prices just about guaranteed customers would go out of their way to get their rebates, quickly sinking CyberRebate into heavy debt. The company, founded by law school student Joel Granik, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2001, listing liabilities of $83.4 million. Much of that debt was owed to consumers who were promised rebates but hadn't received them.
Both Mr. Granik and his business partner, Joseph Lichter, settled with the Federal Trade Commission for $40,000 in August 2004 and were barred from running a rebate-based business. Some rebate claimants eventually received partial reimbursement of about nine cents for every dollar, according to a statement on CyberRebate's Web site.
Money Matters
Then there was Flooz.com, which tried to create a form of digital currency. Similar to the also-ill-fated Beenz.com, users could purchase "flooz" and give it to others as a sort of virtual gift certificate. Flooz could only be spent at participating online retailers, which included BarnesandNoble.com and J. Crew.
The company managed to raise over $50 million in funding from 1999-2001 and even signed on comedian Whoopi Goldberg as a celebrity spokeswoman before bad times hit.
According to Flooz founder and Chief Executive Robert Levitan, who previously co-founded women's Web site iVillage, the beginning of the end came in spring 2001. That's when Flooz's corporate clients began to cut back on orders for gift certificates to be used in promotional giveaways -- a revenue stream Flooz was counting on -- amid the softening economy. Then a ring of thieves in Russia and the Philippines charged about $300,000 in Flooz to stolen credit cards. The online piggy bank officially declared itself broke in August 2001.
Several other online-payment companies also failed, though PayPal survived, largely because it positioned itself as a money-transfer service. PayPal's offerings became particularly popular with online auction users, and that company was acquired by eBay Inc. in 2002.
"I would have wanted a different outcome," said Mr. Levitan, who has since moved on to start-up Pando Networks Inc., which aims to simplify the sending of email attachments. "But I am proud of what we accomplished."
The Sweet Smell of iSmell
The "iSmell," a product created by the now-defunct Digiscents Inc. in 1999, promised to enhance the Web surfing experience by engaging users' senses of smell.
By plugging iSmell into the computer through a USB port, the device would generate diffe
Lists of dotcom era flops. How many times will this issue come up in every major publication? It's kind of like "I love the (variable decade)" on VH1; the occaisional trip down memory lane is enjoyable, but it seems like we have another one of these every few months. Is there some sort of underlying psychological problem whereby we have to convince ourselves that these ideas were bad? It's kind of like we're all trying to convince ourselves that we're better off, despite the economic down turn, because we don't have as many silly ideas kicking around.
It wasn't only an American phenomenon. I worked in a Dotcom in Germany back then where our biggest customer was a German company My Media. Innovative, eh? They burned through 200 million in two years (We built a health and lifestyle portal for them) by holding business meetings on chartered yachts in the Seychelles. When they went down, so did we.
They final month before the office was vacated saw the guys smoking weed in front of the webcam, my boss doing coke in the toilets and our isp bill at enormous rates as the guys spent the whole day downloading stuff from Napster and fighting with the sysadmin who was trying to save a bankrupt company from losing even more money.