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- scoreboard27, on 11/20/2007, -2/+29Pets.com...where you could spend $15 shipping that heavy ass bag of $8 dog food. Genius!
- inactive, on 11/20/2007, -0/+19Webvan should be #1 followed by Pets.com. Pets made more money off the sock puppet than dog food. Webvan used to drive the trucks around empty as a form of advertising.
- chris9902, on 11/20/2007, -0/+15Any company that goes and buys Aeron chairs without having an income is doomed.
- phallus4you, on 11/20/2007, -0/+13The idea behind Webvan was great and it works fantastically today in NYC with Fresh Direct, which is extremely successful. Webvan failed not because people aren't lazy, they certainly are, but because they tried to be too big too fast.
- bigteebo, on 11/20/2007, -1/+11The Amp'd mobile one is hilarious. HALF their subscribers can't pay up? that's like, totally dissin'.
- BufordT, on 11/20/2007, -0/+10Dugg for being one of the very few internet sites to put an entire list of 20 on one page without using quirky photos and having you click "next" ten times.
- boredsam, on 11/20/2007, -0/+9I remember AllAdvantage! For 40 hours of watching their banner a month they sent you a check for $20. What I did was turn off my browser caching, setup a java script that cycled between two very small images, and got a program that made my mouse cursor move on its' own. I let this run overnight, and I maxed out my 40 hours in less than a week, and I collected my checks.
- Shalaby, on 11/20/2007, -0/+9DigiScents? Would anyone actually pay for that service?
- Noctem, on 11/20/2007, -0/+8What .. No Phantom console on the list!?
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTEy - themarq, on 11/20/2007, -0/+7They forgot about Gizmondo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizmondo
This is a great fall from grace story, organized crime, fast cars, tech... good stuff. - Raider007, on 11/20/2007, -0/+7I remember my freshman year of college AllAdvantage was really taking off...
I made like $200 a month thanks to "jiggly mouse" - bimtott, on 11/20/2007, -0/+6One good thing about the demise of Kozmo: liquidating all their kickass orange messenger bags and selling them to the public. My brother's has held up for over a decade now.
- Archon810, on 11/20/2007, -0/+6I can vouch for the ridiculousness of a Cuecat. When I was in high school, we used to sell and give them away in Radioshack. So many people came but the product was such an obvious failure-to-be, it wasn't even funny.
- sophiaperennis, on 11/20/2007, -0/+6I used Webvan, it was great. Free shipping! It was good to have them around as a competitor to Peapod.
- inactive, on 11/20/2007, -0/+6Corngartulations! You found a typogrophaphical error! You win a prize!
- NYC83, on 11/20/2007, -0/+5the essential idea is great if you live in a place like NYC (especially in walk-up apartment)...witness how FreshDirect has thrived here (www.freshdirect.com)
- krets, on 11/20/2007, -0/+5Imagine how much that would have added to the experience of 2girls1cup!
- mrboratsagdiev, on 11/20/2007, -0/+4(What was left of) Pets.com made the most money off the 'sock puppet' by selling it off to another company to be their mascot instead.
- givinupthefight, on 11/20/2007, -0/+4Ahh Kozmo. "I've got an idea: Lets pay bike messengers $10/hour to deliver a $5 pint of ice cream. What could go wrong?"
- Zer0Fade, on 11/20/2007, -0/+4Ha ha, I worked for Pixelon. The trip to Vegas was lame, it was so unorganized and no one knew where they were going. Oh well, thats life at a dot-com. "Michael Fenne" was also a rather eccentric fellow, he loved blasting Opera throughout the office while he sung to it. LOL
- Error601, on 11/20/2007, -0/+4I hardly think technology based companies would be the only ones to make such a list. High risk companies crash and burn all the time. If you want a chance at making big money, you have to take big risks.
- SmokeMeAKipper, on 11/20/2007, -0/+3They used the smell of money to lure in investors. But in the end it was all just a bad smell.
- jbzd, on 11/20/2007, -0/+3In downtown San Francisco there is free shipping with Safeway (can find coupons online) which is a big time saver and cheaper than parking at the store (which would cost a few $).
Oh, also, I'm very lazy when it comes to shopping. - inactive, on 11/20/2007, -1/+4webvan... knew i shoulda shorted it. Americans aren't THAT lazy!
- vrelant, on 11/20/2007, -0/+3We bought from Webvan back when shipping was free. Quick! Place another order before they go out of business!
One of their drivers was unloading boxes and complaining about his job.
"I'm only doing it because of the stock options."
Really? They give stock options to drivers?
"Oh yeah. I got a thousand shares. I'm hoping to cash in and retire next year."
I didn't have the heart to say anything. - NoSuchAgency, on 11/20/2007, -0/+3No mention of the "Iridium" satellite network? I thought it was a financial boondoggle of the first order...
- reddikilowatt, on 11/21/2007, -0/+3I remember the Pointcast screensaver. I thought it was a great concept, but the problem was that it was the same old crappy news that I could get from just about every other news service on the planet.
Interesting that now we have RSS feeds that basically do the same thing. - nicepants, on 11/20/2007, -0/+3Where's Divx (the pay-per-play DVDs) or EZD (the self-destructing DVDs?)!?
- loveandrockets, on 11/20/2007, -0/+2I used to work at Pets.com.
As a working environment it was pretty cool. Laid back. Dogs walking around. Food.
The management made stupid decisions. 1 million $ superbowl ad. Suing Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog. Free shipping to Alaska for 50 lb bags of dog food. (That was what clued me in it was going to go under. You can't pay $50 shipping on a 50 lb bag of dog food. You don't get any profit. See? Evidently the management didn't.) - jordshine, on 11/20/2007, -0/+2What a nostalgic trip down short-term memory lane... the fact that several enjoyed high-profile status makes you wonder about the obvious. But then again, like Formula 1 racers, I'm certain adVenture-Capitalists fold the fiery crashes into their model, and speed along.
- edithsan, on 11/20/2007, -0/+2Wow... good list to learn from.
- CorpT, on 11/20/2007, -0/+2If only the government were there to protect us from ourselves. All our problems would be solved.
- spoulson, on 11/20/2007, -0/+2Though not listed, one of my favorite dot-com sites was priceline.com. Yeah yeah, I know they're still around and so is William Shatner. But, for a while they had this awesome name your own price on gasoline. Many a time I got increments of 50 gallons of gas at below market price and all I had to do was use a voyager card at the pump. Instant discount!
- MothBoy, on 11/20/2007, -0/+2Speaking of Aeron chairs as a measure of conspicuous consumption: The liquidation auction for MP3.com had hundreds of them. They also had a stack of Fender Strats new in boxes, and an amazing array of over the top furnishings and equipment. They deserve a place of shame in a list like this.
Were none of these companies public? Is that what kept colossal failures such as Peregrine Software (lost over $4 billion in shareholder value after it was discovered they falsified huge amounts of sales) off of this list ?
Gotta love San Diego. We like to fail in a big way. Our city will be on the next list of colossal bankruptcies, while prominent San Diegans like John Moores (Peregrine), John Robertson (MP3.com) and Tom Waits (Gateway) laugh all the way to the bank. - antdude, on 11/20/2007, -0/+2I still have my CueCat from Wired subscription. :O
- richalot, on 11/20/2007, -0/+2How about the appropriately name Phantom Gaming System from Infinium Labs? I'd have hated to invest in that disappearing act.
- williamdyer, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1SavaJe: The anti-Android. $120M down the poop chute.
- ChuckCaplan, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1That company was 1-800-BARNONE!
- oldhick, on 11/20/2007, -1/+2Uhh... Companies fail even when their creators and employees "know what they are doing". Its called taking risks...
- hansk, on 11/20/2007, -4/+5"Caspian Networks, orgiginally founded as Packetcom Inc..."
orgiginally? - bimtott, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1Yeah, that's how it works all right.
- tekrat, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1Phantom Games anyone?
- doctechnical, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1I had one of those Pointcast pyramid thingies - MicroCenter was selling them cheap, and now I know why. I tried to find some other use for it, but came up empty.
- shockingbird, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1Amen. This multi-page crap has gotten out of control.
- gak001, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1I thought this was going to be another article about NBC's new social network fro pets. I was almost pissed that two stories about the same thing made it to the front page at the same time again.
- hansk, on 11/21/2007, -0/+1my prize better include sleeping on top of a pile of money surrounded by many beautiful women.
- blatantninja, on 11/21/2007, -0/+1Cue cat might have worked if it just went off regular bar codes, but having to get companies to adopt to their screwed up slanted codes was never going to work.
- decvet, on 11/21/2007, -0/+1Hardly an "All-time" list, since it only goes back 10 years or so. Check your history. Viatron blew $140 million on dumb terminals when millions were real dollars in 1970 or so. The CEO then when on the lecture circuit "How to raise VC money" (true!) Big bucks also evaporated in Gene and Carl Amdahl's wafer scale integration fiasco - $250 million late 1970's. How about the 100 or so disk companies that evaporated 1968 to 1990? How about Pen Computing, even Kleiner Perkins bit hard on that one! I gotta admit tho that Webvan and Iridium (have you ever used one?) are primo candidates at the Billion $ level and hard to surpass for dumb stampedes.
- reddikilowatt, on 11/21/2007, -0/+1It still exists, though. And since the assets were bought at the bankruptcy auction, I believe it is profitable as well.
- zolaar, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1Fx's Re-paginator extension solves that problem.
I was disappointed that the article didn't even mention what some of the business' software/websites were meant to do. I'd have gladly clicked through a couple pages if they told me something about CompanyX's software that wasn't up to snuff. -
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