Dotcomfailures.com Does Just That

Call it New Economy irony. For the past three months, dotcomfailures.com has tracked the demise of Web ventures. Now, the site has become the final entry in its dot-com death toll, officially closing its doors Wednesday. "I have about 200 E-mails in my inbox, and all of them state something like, 'People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones,'" says founder Ryan Nitz.

Launched in early June, the site (tag line: "Kick 'em while they're down") listed shuttered dot-coms as well as predictions of dot-com failures. But fear not-there's another chronicler of moribund start-ups that hasn't gone belly-up. F--kedcompany.com (http://216.150.6.70) has a dot-com version of Celebrity Dead Pool, where players can earn points by guessing which sites will bite the digital dust. Founded by Nitz's roommate, Philip Kaplan, the site was posted for sale on eBay earlier this week, but Kaplan canceled the auction two days after it started. However, the site's home page indicates Kaplan is still looking for a buyer.

As for dotcomfailures.com, Nitz says it was an entertaining hobby. "The best thing about all this is that the actual burn rate for the company is $120," says Nitz, who ponied up the capital himself. Nitz provided free banner ads for one of his favorite sites: ThinkGeek.com, an E-tailer of 'Net culture paraphernalia. As a joke, Nitz posted information on dotcomfailures.com's home page, indicating it had spent $2.6 million in funding. "No sane person would ever dump money into a site focused on the dot-com fallout," he says."It doesn't make sense."