January 29, 2001

by Steve Baldwin

Thanks to every one of you who continues to send me tips (via the Ghost-O-Meter) about dead and defunct Web sites. Ghost Sites' skeleton crew of downsized site researchers continue to file your contributions, and our February issue will feature the best of your cyber-necrotic choices.

This issue, we're going to let you sample our growing collection of dead e-commerce sites that passed into oblivion in the year 2000 - we call it "The E-Failure Museum" - a collection of screen capture files documenting the home pages of 120 commercial Web sites. More than 100 of these ventures expired in the latter half of 2000, victims to adverse financial conditions. Some still struggle on, but many of these failed sites have already disappeared from public view. This collection is a modest attempt to memorialize their passing.

The 136 JPEG screen shots included in this collection were recorded between October of 1996 and December of 2000. Viewing them is not for the faint of heart - the files are listed in alphabetical order:

24/7.com
affinia.com
angryman.com
anteye.com
apbnews.com (original Sidney Schamburg-era, pre-SafetyTips site)
auctions.com
babygear.com
bargainclothing.com
bbq.com
bigwords.com
bizbuyer.com
blackfamilies.com
blaze.com
boo.com
carorder.com
carpet.com
channelspace.com
clickmango.com
comro.com
couch, the
countrycool.com
cyberpark.com
cyborganic1.com
cyborganic2.com
deepcanyon.com
den.com
dreamshop.com
ebody.com
elingo.com
entertaindom.com
eseated.com
esociety.com
etoys_uk.com
eve.com
exchangepath.com
ezcd.com
financialprinter.com
foodline.com
freeride.com
furniture.com
garden.com
gazelle.com
gazoontite.com (1/30: somebody tells me this site has been "resuscitated")
giftemporia.com
gear.com
greatcoffee.com
go.com
greatentertaining.com
healthshop.com
heavensgate.com
hollywoodtickets.com
homewarehouse.com
hotoffice.com
hsupply.com
iam.com
ibelieve.com
icanbuy.com
icast.com
ichoose.com
iguide.com
iguide2.com
industrialvortex.com
internetfilezone.com
is_that_a_fact
iturf1.com
iturf2.com
ivendor.com
kablink.com
kibu.com
lifejacket.com
living.com
mambo.com
mercata.com
mortgage.com
miadora.com
mothernature.com
mungopark.com
mytalk.com
nationstreet.com
netheartbeat.com added 1/30
netizen_tv
numbernine.com
omni.com
onepricecds.com
pandesic.com
pathfinder1.com
pathfinder2.com
petstore.com
phys.com
pixelon.com
planetID.com
politicallyblack.com
powerdime.com
pseudo1.com
pseudo2.com
pseudo3.com
puertabella.com
pupule.com
pushconcepts.com
quepasa.com
redconnect.com
radnet.com
redgorrila.com
redrocket.com
riffage.com
savishopper.com
shopaudiovideo.com
sixdegrees.com
snaki.com
sock_puppet1
sock_puppet2
soldout.com
soulpurpose.com
stim.com
stockpower.com
streamline.com
strobe.com
subrights.com
swoon.com
theman.com
theconvergence.com
thesite.com
thespot.com
thingworld.com
thirsty.com
timedance.com
totalnewyork1.com
totanewyork2.com
tradeinteriors.com
tshirtguy.com
tutornet.com
ubo.com
urbanfetch.com
urbandesign.com
valueamerica.com
violet.com
volume.com
vroom.com
whiplash.com
wholetree.com
womansconsumer.com
xenote.com
ypn1.com
ypn2.com
zatso.net
zebramart.com
ziplink.com
zoomsandiego.com
 


Ghost-o-Meter

You're on the web a lot. You've seen many a dead site. You've forgotten our email address... and you don't feel like coming back here to get it.

What do you do?

Ghost-o-Meter
(javascript required)

The Ghost-o-Meter opens a small, movable window... if you've found a Ghost Site, fill in the blanks, fire it off, and go back to foolin' around. Its that easy.

You can also use this form:




What the ??!

Well, this is all very interesting, but what the heck is Ghost Sites anyway? Why devote a live site to Dead Sites?

If you're interested in this Ghost Sites thing, it is a project that I began in the summer of 1996 while I was working for Time-Warner's Pathfinder. Late in the evening of July 4th, while piloting a small craft across Long Island Sound, I had what only can be described as an epiphany.

From out of the depths came a cruel vision of the World Wide Web. It wasn't a friendly place - an innocent place of community, commerce and chat. It was a great and utterly pitiless electronic ocean that swallowed up sites, careers, and venture capital like a ravenous killer whale. Great sites - sites like Mecklerweb and iGuide - were going down with all hands. Great fortunes were collapsing and proud content sites lay wrecked on the bottom. No one seemed to care. The future was a vast abyss - who would record these days of New Media folly, disaster and despair?

Back on shore, but still haunted by this vision, I launched Ghost Sites as a modest attempt to document the great disappearing fleet of web sites sinking beneath the waves. This project briefly made me spectacularly famous, and then I was quickly, and completely forgotten.

By March of 1997, Ghost Sites had succumbed to the same deadly entropy that had settled over the Internet, and became a crewless wreck itself. For six cruel months, it drifted like a despised garbage barge, broke its keel in a summer squall, and finally washed up on Geocities.

On an icy November morning, Morbus boarded the wreck, inspected the damage, and offered the captain a safe harbor. The bilge pump was started, and the squealing, rusty hull lifted off the sands again. It soon arrived here - in the dark, unquiet waters of Disobey.Com.

If you want to see the article that made me briefly famous, check out Ghosts in the Machine. I became so famous because of this article that there were women lining up to see me - I felt like Elvis! But then... the fall from grace...

If you have a favorite rotting site that you'd like to mention, email me at Steve_Baldwin@hotmail.com.

Ghost Sites has appeared in a number of places including Time Magazine, ZDNet, The Netly News and more. For a list of all those we know of, as well as links to online counterparts, click here. You can also take a look at the limited edition t-shirt we once offered.


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