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Buzz: Death Row
The New Economy -- where liquidations are a spectator sport
By
ERIC ELLIS
July
6, 2000
Web posted at 1:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 1:30 a.m. EDT
Is the Internet history's great creator of wealth, as Silicon Valley
venture capital guru John Doerr often reminds us, or is it the world's
biggest confidence trick, as the recent state of NASDAQ stock prices
might suggest? If your sagging stock portfolio suggests the latter,
then F***edcompany.com
(you'll have to guess the full spelling) might be the site for you.
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The name is a play on the popular e-business magazine Fast Company, which has been one of the Internet's most enthusiastic boosters, and appeals to one of the more perverse instincts of the human character, the fascination in viewing a death You know that old line, that you really enjoy your friends' success, but you enjoy their failure even more.
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This is the site where you get your revenge -- sort of -- on many of those pimply faced teen tycoons who got far too rich far too fast but are now facing the reality that business life is something more than a visit to an online share trading account. The New York-based website hosts a simple game where users select five companies they believe are in deep financial trouble (The message boards make for particularly amusing reading). You get points for each (real) calamity that befalls your selections; mass sackings, denial of new financing, lawsuits and, ultimately, liquidation and closure. When the point tally reaches 100, the sites enter a kind of Hall of Fame -- or infamy as the case may be -- a dubious honor indeed as the ex-staff of British site 24.7.com might agree. Or the Australian site Dvdrent.com.au, which has hung up its 'We're Closed' sign.
Now that "burn rate" has become as widely an understood term as IPO, New Economy companies are expiring all over the Net. Suddenly, liquidation has become a spectator sport. The site is the perfect vehicle for those who missed the missed the Internet gold rush? Or got to it late.
But sometimes all you can do is laugh. If you are still searching
for the Next Big Thing, or your company has found its way to F***edcompany.com
(know the answer yet?), I suggest you log onto BizHumor.com
and fire up the Paradigm Shift Detector (PSD), which purports to
work like an economic barometer.
Another product that Bizhumor is selling -- the Seminar Nap Wraps -- would be perfect in Asia. These are glasses you can strap on while held hostage at the world's most boring conference -- and Asia has several of them a day. With the Seminar Nap Wraps, you can steal 40 winks while still appearing (to the boss) to be awake. Perfect.
Eric Ellis is the Southeast Asia and Technology Editor of the
regional finance portal AsiaWise.com
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