As some of you know, I work for IBM at a place called an Innovation Center, or more precisely, the IBM Center for e-business Innovation::Boston. It’s an IBM location that has a number if different skill sets working together to solve client problems related to their technology needs, and more often than not, related to their web site presence. As part of working with web and internet related technologies, I’ve closely followed the dot com rise and fall over the past few years because, well, it’s what my job is all about.
In 2000, a web site sprung up to poke fun at all these goofy dot coms that made no money, had no business plan and had no idea how they would make long term revenue. It was called F***edcompany.com, with the *** being replaced by letters that make the site a very bad word. The name was a play off of Fast Company, a magazine that was the darling of the magazine world during the height of the dot com era. It’s a great site to keep a check on the pulse of the dot com world. Well, the inventor of the site recently came out with a book called ‘F’d Company-Spectacular dot com Flameouts’ that highlight some of the more high profile failures. The author, Pud, has a very sarcastic writing style that I love. I am only a few pages into it but let me recite one of the first paragraphs.
“I’m out of dog food and my cat’s box needs new litter. I know what I’ll do: I’ll order Dog Chow and Fresh Step online from a sock puppet and then I’ll watch the dog starve and the cat shit all over the house while I wait for it to be delivered!”
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743228626/qid=1024971026/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-0123206-8744717">The book I am talking about</a>
The sock puppet lives on!
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/ap/20020623/ap_en_tv/sock_puppet_4
Posted by: Paul | June 24, 2002 at 11:41 PM