[parker]

Sorry dude, but you must not remember them vividly, because the majority of these sites did actually have a user base and did actually make revenue. In some cases (WebVan for instance), they actually made quite a bit of revenue.

They were simply prey to illogical economics. They had all created machines that were too large for the revenues to support.

As for Friendster, I know it's been fun to say that they've failed for the last 3 years, but as far as I can tell their story isn't even close to being over. They have billions of pageviews and a growing userbase. I'm guessing you'd probably switch places with them right now.

[isaacewing]

WebVan... not a memorable company... Lycos, Alta-Vista (the original search engine), pets.com, over half of those companies had a good idea...

Friendster, 'billions' of page-views... per month?

I think I'm missing 1% of what your saying... I wouldn't switch places with them, I'm not where they are yet... I'm in the development stage, alpha-stage.

Above all that, these companies are on multiple sites listed multiple times for being 'part of the economic dot com failure'. Is that what your referring too when you say "created machines that were too large for the revenues to support"?

[parker]

Guy, check the stats.

According to compete, Friendster is doing 400 Million page views per month and growing.

Revenue for WebVan in the 2000 fiscal year was $259.7 Million: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2001_Jan_25/a...

[gaius]

WebVan, for example, bought a fleet of Mercs to deliver groceries with. If they'd gone for Fords, they might have survived. OK, not that alone, but they basically spent too much money on things that customers didn't care about and wouldn't pay for.