Top 10 dot-com flops
Funny story at c|net about the biggest flops of the "dot-com" era.
My wife used to work at a dot-com in Seattle called "TellThemNow.com". They had an interesting business idea ... what if you were reading a news article about, say, Dennis Rodman's latest public faux-pas, and wanted to tell him just what you thought about him? You could click his name in the article, and you'd get a form submission page that you could fill out, and when you submit it, it goes right to that person (but in reality, to the PR people for them).
Like many dot-coms, they had a lot of venture capital, and a pretty big principal attached to the company (Wiley Brooks, a major name in public relations). There was just one problem: they didn't have a plan to make any money. Well, they did, but it relied on a severely flawed fundamental assumption that the PR people would want to buy this feedback, and due to the nature of the internet, that feedback would be overwhelmingly negative ... no one wants to hear Joe Q. Public who has nothing good to say!
They made a pretty good run at it, but it flopped, like so many others. But this list at c|net is a fun little historical trip.
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1 comment:
Hey Rob, Wiley Brooks here. Your item on TellThemNow.com was largely true (well above the John McCain standard :-) )But I would like to correct a few points about TellThemNow.
First, most of the email addresses were the actual email addresses of the individuals. For example, every single government person was their actual email address. So, if TTN were around today, you could send an email directly to Sarah Palin. Of course, she'd ignore it because it wasn't on her secret Yahoo "personal" account. Most of the email addresses for business leaders in our database was their direct addresses. Where we were less specific were celebrities and sports stars. Those tended to go to catch-all addresses. So, if you wanted to send a message to Britney Spears it was routed to her agent. We were clear, though, in saying that we couldn't guarantee that the messages would actually get to the individual. Still, we know for a fact that many, especially those to elected and other officials, did.
You made an assumption in your post that most of the messages were negative. We were all surprised that the split between negative and positive messages was pretty balanced. When you make it easy for someone to give feedback, it takes down a huge barrier. Turns out that people like to give a compliment.
Third, you said there was no plan to make money because of what you called a "fundamentally flawed" assumption that PR people wouldn't want to buy the info. The fact is that our advisory board included some of the biggest names in the PR industry across the country, including the person who at that time was head of the Council of PR Firms, an organization comprised of the biggest and most influential PR agencies. When we went out to assess interest in our beta product, three of the top 11 PR firms IN THE WORLD offered two of their biggest clients each to be part of the beta. They knew that our product pricing was likely to START at $100K a year and they didn't blink (whoops, a Palinism). Unfortunately, we ran out of money following the dotcom callapse of 2000 before we could get the beta of the actual product up and running.
There is no doubt in my mind that had we been able to ride out the Hurricane Katrina of the dotcom world we would have been a great success. To bring it into today's environment, here's something to consider.
If it had been around today, both Obama and McCain could have been clients. This morning's news about the US government planning to buy up all of the bad mortgages likely would have produced an overwhelming number of emails to various officials. We could assess them all. Obama and McCain could have learned - in real time - not just the big picture of the totals responding positively or negatively to the news, but detailed demographics that would tell them such things as what zip code the senders lived in, how strongly they affiliated with one party or the other, whether they had given money to political candidates, what income category they fell into, what their ethnic background is and a host of other important demographics.
Additionally, we could tell them which news articles (by specific source) generated the biggest response and search those articles for key words and phrases. Was there something about the way the Washington Post wrote about the news that resonated more positively with voters than the piece on the same subject over at CNN? It's pretty naive to say that PR people wouldn't buy this kind of REAL TIME information. In fact, they lust for it.
I hadn't thought of TellThemNow in awhile. Thanks for giving me a reason to walk down memory lane. I was pretty devastated when TellThemNow finally went under, but a mentor of mine at the time helped me. He said simply that a tidal wave destroys both the rickety old boats and the strong seaworthy ones who happen to be in the harbor at the time. TellThemNow was strong and seaworthy, but its fate was sealed on April 15, 2000 when the bottom fell out of the Internet market.
Before I sign off I must add that I had a great idea in TellThemNow, but its success - and it was very successful in its short life - was largely due to an incredible staff. We had 40 employees (sorry, I don't know which one was your wife) and almost to a person they were bright, dedicated, fun-loving people. I enjoyed going to the office every day, even when things grew bleak. I was always inspired by the support of the employees. Virtually every single one stuck with us till the last day.
Again, thank you for bringing up a fond memory. Plaese give my best to your wife.
Wiley
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