Word: dotcom
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...every revolution there comes that bitter moment when the flag-waving has to stop, the grand social theories have to adapt to reality, and a large number of the revolutionaries inevitably find themselves hauled off to the guillotine. The dotcom revolution is no different, except that, true to form, it has accelerated the process. The time it takes to go from hero on the barricades to zero with your head in a basket has shrunk to a nanosecond...
When his contract runs out in a month, Thorsen will hardly be the only dotcom refugee standing in line. Nor will he be the only one cursing his valueless options. This has always been a highly volatile industry, but recent events have been on the scale of a virtual earthquake. Here's a sample of the casualty list for just two days last week: More than a third of Seattle-based Hardware.com's workers went under the hammer. Furniture.com in Framingham, Mass., laid off 80 employees--that's 41% of its work force. Streaming video site Pseudo.com axed 58 jobs...
Even more cruel, of course, is when the paycheck stops too. Just ask the 140 former employees at APBnews.com a Wall Street- based crime-reporting website that hired reporters for a salary in the low $40,000s--very low for a New York City dotcom--plus a meager 500 to 1,000 options. Once again, they turned out to be worthless when the site ran out of cash. As with most dotcom firings, the end was as swift as it was ignominious. News editor Jim Edwards returned from a vacation in Amsterdam to find his company had collapsed...
While Edwards is still looking for a job, a dozen rehired employees are keeping the site alive as its owners make one last bid to stave off bankruptcy. It's hard for even the most radical revolutionary to keep the faith under such circumstances. "I would go to a dotcom again," says reporter Joe Beaird, "but once you see your company go under overnight, you know how it really is. And it screws...
...that they were dinosaurs who didn't get it. And when he launched the My.MP3.com service that allowed users to copy their CDs into his online folders and listen to them from anywhere they chose, those dinosaurs won a copyright-infringement court case that threatened to take the upstart dotcom for every penny...