FC disappearing forever?

It appears to be all over for one of the most entertaining websites ever to grace the Internet. F---edcompany.com (link not necessarily work friendly) started out in 2000 as a place where a few out of work computer nerds could take bets on which dot-com company was going to collapse next. It grew into something which would make founder Phillip Kaplan (a.k.a Pud) an Internet legend -- a monument to corporate incompetence. They were also the first to break a lot of other amusing stories, such as this one.

As a working class boy from Werris Creek, I suppose I've always found it amusing to read about companies generating $350,000 in sales over five years, and somehow turning it into a loss of $84 million. Before anybody criticises me for taking delight in this sort of thing, just remember that these CEO's often screwed a lot of people, be they employees or investors, to obtain the $84 million in the first place. Given that legal systems the world over seem reluctant to punish anyone for this sort of thing, FC was probably the only consolation a lot of people had.

The message board was also a way to find quick entertainment if you had a spare five minutes to kill. There was always something happening there during the site's greatest days. Granted, there was a lot of crap posted, but at times there were some interesting and incisive comments posted, not just about the corporate world, but about life generally. And if you got bored with that, there was always a quick game of pink slip panic to vent some workplace frustrations.

I suppose the beginning of the end came some time ago when Pud jumped ship and started Adbrite.com. It was ironic that someone who had made a fortune on dot-com companies falling apart could join one, and when he left recently there were a few people trying to claim "satisfaction". Then again, the traffic on the site had been steadily dwindling for a while. Perhaps all the IT people who got laid off in the crash have moved on to other things. It also didn't help that the ads on the site steadily became more intrusive as time went by.

Now the message boards are gone (both General and Happy Fun Slander), and the front page hasn't been updated in two weeks. Perhaps Pud himself has moved on to other things. Somehow I never got around to posting a link to the site in this blog. I guess I just assumed it would always be there. Now that it isn't there, the Internet will be a considerably less entertaining place.