At first glance, the demise of TheStreet.co.uk (big advertising spender, crowded market, reliance on a small number of revenue streams, etc, etc) reads like a classic dotcom demise. And then you read the final email it sent out to its users. Here's a bit of it: "TheStreet.com, which today took full control of TheStreet.co.uk, took the decision to close the site to cut its costs. All the staff here are being made redundant. It's another internet collapse - but with a difference. TheStreet.co.uk hit all its financial targets during its brief life, including cashflow."
If this is true, it sends a shiver down my spine. Either the company's targets were unrealistically conservative, or the parent company is unbelievably desperate to cut costs. It's dispiriting to see a company of the size and stature of TheStreet.com consider the UK market sufficiently non-core to drop an impressive and apparently successful product like a stone. Especially for the unfortunate people who worked there.
Increasingly, certain US web companies remind me of the Turkish Empire under Suleiman the Magnificent, whose domains grew to vast proportions, including huge areas of the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe. Conquest was his army's raison d'etre - the momentum of expansion was its own motivation.
If it stopped, it would crumble. But it became too ambitious, spread itself thin, and found its supply lines easily cut. By then, it couldn't go back. How's that for a poncy analogy?
- It has been pointed out that the email I mentioned last week, featuring a collection of inane quotes, supposedly from George Dubya Bush, had been circulated months earlier with Al Gore's name at the bottom. In my correspondent's opinion, this proves that (a) I'm a terrible journalist who doesn't check his facts (possible), and (b) I am a Democrat who uses this column to score cheap political points. In my opinion, it either proves that (a) it's worryingly believable that either candidate could have said those things, so Ralph Nader should be installed as president immediately, or (b) everything you receive by email is shit. Answers on a postcard.
Richard Lord is the editor of Revolution.
Sites can even become victims of their own success.
At first glance, the demise of TheStreet.co.uk (big advertising spender, crowded market, reliance on a small number of revenue streams, etc, etc) reads like a classic dotcom demise. And then you read the final email it sent out to its users. Here's a bit of it: "TheStreet.com, which today took full control of TheStreet.co.uk, took the decision to close the site to cut its costs. All the staff here are being made redundant. It's another internet collapse - but with a difference. TheStreet.co.uk hit all its financial targets during its brief life, including cashflow."
If this is true, it sends a shiver down my spine. Either the company's targets were unrealistically conservative, or the parent company is unbelievably desperate to cut costs. It's dispiriting to see a company of the size and stature of TheStreet.com consider the UK market sufficiently non-core to drop an impressive and apparently successful product like a stone. Especially for the unfortunate people who worked there.
Increasingly, certain US web companies remind me of the Turkish Empire under Suleiman the Magnificent, whose domains grew to vast proportions, including huge areas of the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe. Conquest was his army's raison d'etre - the momentum of expansion was its own motivation.
If it stopped, it would crumble. But it became too ambitious, spread itself thin, and found its supply lines easily cut. By then, it couldn't go back. How's that for a poncy analogy?
- It has been pointed out that the email I mentioned last week, featuring a collection of inane quotes, supposedly from George Dubya Bush, had been circulated months earlier with Al Gore's name at the bottom. In my correspondent's opinion, this proves that (a) I'm a terrible journalist who doesn't check his facts (possible), and (b) I am a Democrat who uses this column to score cheap political points. In my opinion, it either proves that (a) it's worryingly believable that either candidate could have said those things, so Ralph Nader should be installed as president immediately, or (b) everything you receive by email is shit. Answers on a postcard.
Richard Lord is the editor of Revolution.
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