Met Police On Standby For Clashes As...
Society & Culture0 min ago
By Christina Okoli
�
MORE and more Internet companies are saving-up, logging-off and shutting down.
�
In the year 2000, six of some of the web's biggest movers closed, resulting in a plunge in the value of technology stocks, thousands of job losses and a growing culture of uncertainty in the Internet industry.
�
Dozens of Internet companies also fell into the arms of their rivals, fulfilling a long-standing prophecy that the dot com industry is going to consolidate and become smaller, with the big companies, like Yahoo!, MSN, America Online (AOL) and Amazon, swallowing-up 90 per cent of the online revenue.
�
In the space of months, dozens of dot coms have gone from boom to bust. Last year saw the demise of big name websites, including Boo.com, Clickmango.com, TheStreet.com, Eve.com, Boxman.com and Priceline.com.
�
Analysts are blaming the dot com fallout on three main things:
With all its pitfalls the Internet is still regarded as one of the most open and entrepreneurial markets in history, though it is increasingly being viewed as the most brutal.
�
One of the first major websites to hang up its hat was Boo.com, which was rumoured to have grossly over-spent in its early stages, after setting unrealistic user and traffic targets. What followed was a series of cancelled launch dates, with the press and the public becoming impatient and distrusting of Boo.com from the outset. When the site finally launched in 1999 it attracted a fraction of the number of users it had budgeted for, plunging the company into a financial crisis. By May 2000, Boo.com was no more.
�
Yet, in the midst of all the gloom, there is an upside.�The�founders of Boo have recently announced plans to relaunch the site. The legacy of Boo.com will live on and forever be remembered as the benchmark of how not to build an Internet empire.
�
We are discussing this subject�now on The Answerbank message boards. Click here to join.