|
|
|
Top Ten Dot-Com Flops
Posted by Pile
(8008 views)      [E-Mail link]
|
 |
 CNet has an interesting article on the top 10 dot-com business flops of all time. It's of particular amusement to us, because this site is running on a server we purchased at a liquidation auction from the company listed as #5. |
|
CNET's list:
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
Personally, I think a few others should have made the list.
Priceline.com - while not technically defunct, this company's boneheaded, patented process of "name your price" never took off. What consumer wants to book an airline trip, name a price and then wait until later to find out if his bid was accepted? Then there was the priceline gas fiasco where the company lost millions of dollars. Even William Shatner couldn't stop this ship from its collision course with the planet lame.
Any domain with a Z in place of an S - I've never understood how anyone would invest in a web site whose own brand identity is centered on the bastardization of the English language. There are literally thousands of failures of these types of ventures, where a would-be dot-commer would save a few dollars acquiring a sound-alike domain name for his goofball scheme.
Auction sites competing with eBay - Long after eBay had acquired dominant marketing share of the online auction world, a number of brain dead financial types felt they could wrestle with ebay for market control. The names of most of these sites escape me now, and have faded into the cyber ether, just like the hundreds of millions of dollars foolish investors pumped into them.
Exodus - One of the world's largest "web hosting whores." A company that ran huge data centers and specialized in low cost, high capacity bandwidth and server resources. Who would have thought giving away stuff would lead to bankruptcy?
stamps.com - This was supposed to revolutionize the way people mailed packages, with downloadable postage. While the company is not dead, the viability of major profitability of such a venture has been.
jobs.com - It's a shame their employees couldn't use the web site to help them find new opportunities after this company went Chapter 11. (Monster later picked up the domain)
Zap.com - When the manufacturer of fish oil suddenly decides he's going to start up a major Internet portal, you know you're on the right track for super-failing goodness.
Wine.com - Like many others, this site still appears to be online, but it's not the original company. The hot net property that was originally wine.com went under in April of 2001 and others picked up the skeletal remains and did something different.
TheStandard.com - An uber hip dot-com publication which crashed and burned as quickly as most of the subjects it wrote about.
MySpace.com - Like wine.com, this company original went under in May of 2001, because *gasp* they couldn't make any money when they gave away web space to everyone on the planet. The site probably still doesn't make money even though the the new owners haven't fundamentally changed their business plan. |
Details |
|
|
|
Bumper Sticker Store