[pixl97]

Hence marketing in making people want it.

So you have two options, be good at making people want to spend money on something. This is pretty hard and a rare capability.

The other is to watch trends and catch what people want now, and be ready to deliver a product that does that....

[SoftTalker]

Really at that time the internet was still a novelty and too hard to use for many people. Remember this was before smartphones, a lot of people were still on dial-up, which added tremendous friction to using online services. Many households didn't even have a PC that could get online. Facebook didn't exist. Amazon had just started to expand beyond being an online bookstore. The investment bubble and hype were too far ahead of the reality and patience ran out.