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Comments: 192 + - Technology: Dot-Com Craze Peaked 10 Years Ago This Week on Tuesday March 09, @05:22PM
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netbuzz writes "When the NASDAQ stock index hit its all-time high of 5,133 on March 10, 2000, it had more than doubled in a year and the dot-com bubble was already leaking in a big way. A week later the NASDAQ had fallen 9 percent. A year later it was below 2000. Gone were such poster children of the era as Pets.com, Kozmo, and — who could forget? — Whoopi Goldberg's Flooz. Here's a look back."
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I'm just waiting on this .info thing to peak (Score:5, Funny)
GoDaddy said these .info domains were the future! And they let me have one for the low low price of $1.99!
Re:I'm just waiting on this .info thing to peak (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the funniest post I've seen in a while.
Proud Domains is a reseller. Your real registrar is Wild West Domains. Which does not exist as a separate physical entity from GoDaddy.com (just a separate corporate entity).
What's funnier is that the support number on Proud Domains is a 480 number, which probably takes you straight to GoDaddy's support team. Except they're not allowed to say they're GoDaddy when providing you with support if you call into that number.
I know because I've been on the other end of that support line.
I'm glad you're super happy with the support they provide and their non-shoddy products. But you are using GoDaddy.
Parent
So does anyone want to buy (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry, no deal. My pets.com new-in-box sockpuppet is part of the centerpiece of my collection...
What is Up with Go.com? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Looks like you have yourself a Hijacker. Check your DNS.
Re:What is Up with Go.com? (Score:4, Informative)
The front page www does indeed seem worthless, but http://espn.go.com/ [go.com] and http://disney.go.com/ [go.com] and http://abcnews.go.com/ [go.com] look like they would account for traffic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go.com [wikipedia.org] has some info.
Parent
Re:What is Up with Go.com? (Score:5, Informative)
You may have heard of the following sites:
http://espn.go.com/ [go.com]
http://disney.go.com/index [go.com]
http://abcnews.go.com/ [go.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Programmers where like Rock Stars... (Score:4, Interesting)
Jobs where plentiful, signing bonuses common, stock options flowed like champagne......
I miss it.
Then company I worked for had an all hands meeting and then proceed to hand out unemployment forms.. We weren't even a dot com, but lack of investment killed them.
Like waking from a wonderful dream....
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
At least you got to experience those "golden years", I was still in school when the dot bomb hit. Admittedly I decided not to go directly from high school to the job market because I was convinced the whole thing would blow up, but what I didn't know was that entering the job market in the post-bomb years with no experience and straight out of college meant most employers would assume I was just another one of those "hey, there's gold in them thar intarwebs" guys who was just trying to make lots of money.
Sa
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Pretty much the same thing happened with me. I entered college in Fall 2009. I had known since I was playing on my Commodore 10 years earlier that I wanted to be a programmer when I grew up. There were tech firm recruiters coming in talking to the CompSci majors promising all sorts of great things. To me I was like "Hey - I wasn't expecting this, but damn this programming thing might actually turn out to be even more awesome.". The speakers were even saying things like "I could probably place most of y
Re:Programmers where like Rock Stars... (Score:5, Funny)
I entered college in Fall 2009...Fast forward to Fall 2003 when I graduated...
Back to the future!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Are you sure? :P
Re:Programmers where like Rock Stars... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a similar, unfortunate, experience.
I studied computer science because I loved using computers since I was in first grade, even though I never owned one until a few months before graduating HS. There was just something about their flexibility, and capacity for automating tasks that appealed to me.
When I chose CS as my major in college, my friends were all telling me that I only needed to study for a couple of years, apply for a few jobs, get competing offers with huge salaries and signing bonuses, and I would be set. This was based on the experiences of their older brothers, cousins, etc. As a result, I thought nothing about all the loans I was taking out to attend university. It wasn't that I was greedy, I just couldn't get a full scholarship, and my parents couldn't afford to give me a dime, so if I was going to continue my education instead of working right out of HS, I would need a lot of loans.
Then the bust happend, and I spent my summer of 2001 working helpdesk for a government agency. In 2002, I couldn't even get a summer job, and lived off $250 a month leftover from my loans that year, with $200 going toward rent, ~$35 toward utilities, and ~$15 toward food. Not even a fast food joint would hire me. In 2003 I didn't even bother looking for a job, because it was preferrable to be scraping by and deal with more debt when I graduated than to face the impossibility of finding a job. When I graduated in 2004, I jumped at the first job I could get, which was desktop/server administration, intranet maintenance, and helpdesk in a 3-man IT shop for a very non-technical company. It paid the bills for 3 years, and allowed me to support my wife while she attended university. Toward the end of the third year, I was offered my first development job, working for a small company that was bought (a week later) by a mega-multinational.
Now things have turned around, I am earning twice what I was earning at my first job out of college, and my $105,000 in school debt is well under control. My wife graduated from school, and is earning a very nice sum too. Sure, she has $40,000 in school debt, but five years of scraping by together has taught us how to live well below our means; and with our combined salaries (and no kids) we have considerable means.
If the "golden years" never occured, I would have ended up working at a video store straight out of HS, spending all my money on video games, and living with my parents. I never got to experience the era, but it gave me the courage to take a bold risk and become the first person within my family (immediate and extended) to attend college. Sure, it was a rocky road, hiking through the rubble that was the dot-com bust, but I made it through in the end.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You want a nice job out of college? Have experience. Do internships. Experience, experience and internships. Also, experience. And internships seldom hurt.
I did 3 internships over 4 summers and worked on an academic website during the school year. There was some big-name experience there: IBM offers a few good internship programs. I won't tell you how much I'm making now; you'd be aghast.
WE ARE STILL ROCK STARS! (Score:4, Funny)
I am a Ruby on Rails developer, and I AM A ROCK STAR. You think you know CRUD? Nuh uh! Me, RoR and ActiveRecord will kick your pathetic ass, because not only are we ROCK STARS, but we are CODE NINJAS.
See my fedora? Yeah, you do, bitch. It shows I'm real. I'm only 18 and haven't been to university, and my startup has no real customers, but me and AJAX will whoop your ass and make you worship DHH.
BRING IT.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Rockstars? Oh yeah? Where were my groupies?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Dream time. Cue didgeridoo and rock paintings.
Even in Northern Virginia there was mania. One afternoon on my way home from work, I saw a plane fly by trailing a banner "Cool Internet Jobs at UUNet". Searchlights played in the evening over Tyson's corner. There was also a helicopter trailing a big sign for some tech company... I want to say HP, but I don't exactly recall.
Alas, the ISP I worked for was acquired by a boring telecom, which raised our pay a bit but didn't fill our parking lot with Ferraris.
T
dot com business model (no, not the ??? one) (Score:4, Funny)
Let's sell dimes for a nickel and make it up in volume......
the dotcom boom (Score:3, Interesting)
How many people went from paper millionaires to "LOL..wut?" during this time?
The only good thing about the .bomb was that it separated the wheat from the chaff, in that all the little monkeyboys who thought getting their MCSE meant $85k+/yr are no longer in the industry, for the most part.
Basically, after the .bomb, the only people left were the good ones.
Re:the dotcom boom (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, my experience from working tech support here in Sweden in the years after the dot bomb was that a lot of the incompetent ones entrenched themselves in "safe" positions and focused on job security and climbing the corporate ladder, it's amazing how many completely inept "senior" sysadmins there are that need to call in an expensive consultant just to make basic configuration changes to systems that they're supposed to be experts on.
Parent
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Unfortunately that's rather the truth than "separating wheat from chaff". Back then I was as pissed as anyone when I got fired while a coworker whose only abilities concisted of blameshifting and buttkissing got promoted instead.
I just couldn't see the big picture back then, I basically live off these guys now! Here's how it works: Someone who could barely turn on a computer without causing a complete IT meltdown on the floor became sysadmin in 1999 because back then, basically anyone who could spell TCP/IP
Re:the dotcom boom (Score:4, Funny)
Where is this wonderful meritocracy you live in, and can I move there?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Heh, I was only partly serious. The boom did weed out some of the codemonkeys, of course, but you only need to look at thedailywtf.com [thedailywtf.com] to see there are still some real idiots in our profession.
Re:the dotcom boom (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Ha, My .com artifacts lasted longer... (Score:5, Funny)
I still have, in my office, my pets.com sock puppet (still in box), the business cards for Petopia.com's CEO and CFO, my webvan box, and most precious, the receipt for 1 pack of lifesavers (5 flavor, $.48) delivered by Webvan for no-charge.
Ahh, those were good times...
Re:Ha, My .com artifacts lasted longer... (Score:5, Funny)
The dotcom implosion can actually be traced back to this particular transaction. Way to go.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You're welcome!
Seriously, the office of grad students I was in, we made it our DUTY to help the dumb net companies implode. EG, we were really really good at exploiting ValueAmerica, and everytime Webvan had 2L bottles of diet coke on special, we'd order a ton delivered to our door...
Being naive, I lost a lot of money that year (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Being naive, I lost a lot of money that year (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends: Did you do the same thing in mortgage banking a couple of years ago?
And you've learned some important lessons about investing, like:
1. Don't trust hype.
2. No, really, don't trust hype.
3. If you invest on momentum, you've probably already missed the boat.
4. Profitable companies are better investments than unprofitable companies for a reason.
5. Don't be afraid to be conservative. You might not make as much as the folks who risk a lot, but you're much more likely to hang onto your cash.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are into investing in bubbles remember this famous quote:
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
THe US hasn't defaulted on a bond since its inception. If we did default on our bonds, it would mean almost immediate crashing of the world economy and most likely war with China. So yes, I'd be pretty sure- in the small percentage chance you're wrong, you probably won't live long enough for it to matter.
Kozmo.com (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like we have these retrospectives on the dot-com bubble every 1-2 years - guess it's being driven by all the still-unemployed programmers.
I will mention (as I do in every dot-com retrospective thread) a bunch of my coworkers did their best to bankrupt Kozmo.com - unintentionally, of course. But with no minimum charge, it was the "go to" place whenever anyone was jonesing for a pint of Ben and Jerry's or even a Snickers bar.
Oh, and we can't have one of these threads without mentioning Eazel!
It's amazing how so many of these companies had no business plan whatsoever. It's REALLY amazing that, back then, some people were actually defending this practice! People who asked "what's the long term business plan" were ridiculed as being small minded or being guilty of outmoded thinking.
Re:Kozmo.com (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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"Get bought out" is not a business plan, it's an exit plan.
A business plan is "I'm going to do X, Y and Z. It will cost N (expenditure and arithmetic to prove it) and produce a product which can be sold for A (show arithmetic to prove it). Selling this product B number of times per week (show arithmetic to demonstrate this is realistic) will generate a gross profit of C. Heck, even if I only sell this product (B/2) times per week I'll cover my costs.
Competitors include Rod, Jane and Freddy - all of whom
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, its not a long term plan but its been a pretty successful plan, just ask the founders of YouTube, Neopets, Picasa, and any number of sites or products acquired.
Re:Kozmo.com (Score:5, Funny)
But now we have companies with down-to-earth business plans - like twitter.
Parent
Re:Kozmo.com (Score:4, Insightful)
And large banks.
And airlines.
And auto manufacturers.
And newspapers.
And publishers.
And Malls/retail.
God, I just got myself depressed again.
Parent
When you don't make anything... (Score:5, Insightful)
When you don't have a manufacturing sector, it's hard to create actual wealth. When corporate structures have co-opted your government into forcing you to compete with third world wages and shifted the tax burden from the richest to the middle class, it's impossible.
Hey, welcome to 18th Century France! I can't wait to see what happens next...
Parent
Lies, damn lies, and... well, you're full of shit. (Score:5, Informative)
True. How fortunate that the US is #1 in manufacturing, and vastly ahead of #2 (Japan) and very far ahead of #3 (China).
You know what the most important thing is for statistics? Context [nationmaster.com]. Our manufacturing per capita consistently places us outside of the top 10. It's like people celebrating a US or Canadian women's hockey victory despite the fact that we have more players by a factor of a thousand. Sweden, Norway, Japan, and Germany outperform us in a number of areas. And I bet if you took entertainment out of the equation it would really be illuminating.
You also may want to know that the #2 economy (by GDP alone) is now China. It also just overtook Germany as the world's largest exporter (again, by pure GDP, not per capita).
And worse, Bill Clinton signed a larger tax cut for the rich than George Bush ever did...
Alright, now you're just full of shit, by income tax and by effective tax rates. Read the tax rates here. [taxfoundation.org] Top bracket under Bush is 35%. Top bracket under Clinton is 39.6%. Capital gains tax was cut from 20% to 15%. Income from dividends went from 35% to 15%. The Estate Tax was halved, and even completely nonexistent for one year (this year, I think). And that's why you hear the babbling heads screaming bloody murder about keeping the Bush Tax Cuts.
There's even an article in the Times from 2007. This shit is no secret. "Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional study."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/washington/08tax.html [nytimes.com]
And before you say a word about the richest paying the most taxes - OF COURSE. The top 1% of households hold more than 50% the assets. Why wouldn't they be paying most of the taxes?
If you have any other questions about reality, feel free to ask.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not sure I like the idea of an airline with a down-to-earth business plan.
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SFgirl, chronicling the dot-com boom 10 years ago (Score:3, Interesting)
For those of you who weren't there, see SFgirl [archive.org], the web site for dot-com party girls. [archive.org]
Here's the dot-com party list for one week [archive.org], ten years ago.
Typical party review [archive.org]: Mediaplex.com [mediaplex.com]
Always one for a free night time invite into the SFMOMA, sfboy lined up with the rest of the VC bottom feeders and various webtrash last Wednesday evening to try his hand at the new phenomenon sweeping the city called "Let the Dot Coms Pay for Your Drinks". Inadequate staff with bad planning only worked to our advantage as CM slipped past the guestlist list like a bad desktop application business plan past an overzealous venture capitalist. Once inside sfboy experienced the largest spread of food yet to feed the frothing crowds shoved uncomfortably into a small room. Picture fields of ahi, buckets of fresh smoked salmon, oysters galore, cheese from every udder imaginable, sushi, dumplings, and chocolates, oh my! Add several ornate ice sculptures with internal martinis luges and you've got a real crowd pleaser! Hear, Hear, my stomach cries for Mediaplex! Take me in nightly, feed me completely, shower me with your VC cash!
Inside the museum itself child labor laws were overlooked at several dozen grommets flipped, spun and generally amused the masses with what appeared to be an orphanage filled with circus rats in training. I promptly notified the proper authorities.
Sfboy relunctantly admits that he has no idea what Mediaplex pretends to posses as a business model but he wishes them well in their attempts to create a virtual circus accompanied by a fine buffet.
Party Bill: $100,000
Clowns: 100
Professional Clowns: 25
Bars: 4
Party size: 650
Ahhhh, dot.com (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent the dot.com time in a bank auditing company. So I had a perfect view when the whole crap started to crash and burn.
Assessment of risk was completely off the bat. Everyone thought the internet is the next big thing. That really will take off. Everyone will buy everything online. Soon. Any time now. It's so much easier. And with a concentrated storage, logistics and delivery, you simply HAVE to be cheaper (overhead-wise) than everyone else, and computers are cheaper than brick-and-mortar stores, and no shop rents, and and and... it just MUST be a huge thing! And those loans, they will pay for themselves. Easily. They have no expense, you see? They can all invest it in their computers. And stuff. And what they need. And marketing is so big, it just HAS to take off like crazy!
Believe it or not, THAT was actually the reasoning behind the unsecured multi million loans! Everyone was so hyped up about how easily they should be able to recover their investments. Hell, NOT throwing money at them would have been so stupid because everyone else did it and you just can't stay out of it because then your revenue would be lower and nobody would give you money (sounds familiar? It reminds me a lot of the current "we had to do those high risk businesses because else we could not offer those insane interest rates and if we didn't, nobody would have invested with us... It's the same bull all over again).
What appearantly everyone failed (or refused) to see was that a lot of these people had little more than a pipe dream for a business plan and no experience with running a business whatsoever. We'll certainly hear a lot of stories of people who worked at dot.com businesses at the time. Tell me: These were startups, right? How many had expensive paid-by-company lunches or parties? What cars did your bosses drive, at company expense? Where was your office, and how was it furnished? What PR stunts did you stage?
That's not how you "invest" money. That's how you squander it. And that's what made the bubble burst.
Y2K bug (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Where were YOU when the bomb dropped? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that I was head of IT for a non-profit medical marijuana club in San Francisco.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Pretty sure?
Must have been some good sh!t...
Re:Where were YOU when the bomb dropped? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hehe, yeah, just a little joke. In reality, we had a state of the art integrated membership, document management, inventory, and point of sales system, hosted on a server with encrypted hard drives, in a locked and booby trapped closet, with hidden kill switches placed in strategic locations around the club, at foot level so we could kick them if the cops threw us up against the wall. Stoned or not, it was some of my best work. :)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)