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'90s Dot-Coms — Where Are They Now?

Posted by kdawson on from the madness-remembered dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Industry Standard has put together a list of 10 dot-com stars from the Internet bubble of the late 1990s, and tracked down what happened to the services and their founders. A lot of the services are still around, albeit under new ownership, including eToys, Garden.com, and DrKoop.com. Others have been completely reinvented — Boo.com, an online clothing retailer that burned through $125 million in funding in the late 1990s, is now an online travel community. Of the founders, many were able to cash out early and/or achieve later online success. Excite's Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer later started JotSpot, which was bought by Google, and Kraus now directs work on Google's OpenSocial initiative. Others did not fare as well, such as two of the co-founders of Garden.com, who declined to cash out at the height of the bubble, and are currently 'between business ventures.' The insiders' post-mortems of the failed dot-coms are interesting — several suggest the concepts were good but too early for their time, while others identify specific factors that led to the failures — ranging from a lack of advertising to 'intense' greed."

5 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Stamps.com by fataugie · · Score: 4, Funny

    There are still ads for Stamps.com.

    Of all the Dot Bombs that I would have thought would go tits up, this was one.....guess I was wrong.

    Now if only I can get LNUX back to $100 a share, I have a chance to get my IRA back into the black.

    --

    WTF? Over?

  2. Re:Oh, the ironing. by abolitiontheory · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ironic, isn't it, that the people who "declined to cash out"(read: take investors money and run) are unemployed, while many of those who pocketed the money are employed elsewhere? I would prefer it the other way around. When you played Super Mario or Donkey Kong, what happened when you stayed on one of those hovering, crumbling log platforms too long? You had to start the level over. Life is sometimes about hopping from one platform to the next, before the first one drops out from under you, and people get rewarded for that.

    Instead of seeing it as cashing out, maybe see it like a surfer who knows when the wave is going to break. You get back to shore and people say, "nice ride. here's a better board, go out there and do it again, and this time we'll take pictures!"

    Captain going down with his ship is romantic, but maybe not the most practical.

    And if I fit any more metaphors into this post I'm going to shoot myself.

  3. They missed one... by Siener · · Score: 5, Funny

    They missed the most influential and groundbreaking site of the whole dot-com era: Zombocom!

    --
    siener's youtube channel
  4. Re:You don't understand by hackstraw · · Score: 2, Funny

    Others used scripts to refresh the page in a loop, and/or to simulate a click on the ad if they were paid more for a click. Others urged their users to do that for them.

    I make $5,000/month sitting at home clicking on banner ads.

    Don't you?

    Best job I've ever had since I was paid to watch TV.

  5. Re:Oh, the ironing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Kinda like those people who didn't know how to close their HTML tas properly, eh? ;)

    Yeah, like the kind of people that make fun of those that missed an HTML tag, and in the process, make a typo themselves. Isn't it a bitch how you can't re-edit something you posted?