July 18, 2001

6:34 AM

"New Media, New Arse."BBC News Online is running a week-long series highlighting days and events that signalled the UK's dot-com downturn. (Slightly ironic, as compared to the US, the boom didn't even get started here.) But do you have your own particular moment that sums up the point where boom turned to bust?
posted by holgate (13 comments total)

When that jerk from uunet started yammering about "commercializing the internet." 1989?
posted by jfuller at 6:43 AM on July 18, 2001

About 30 days after I got my stock options.
posted by briank at 6:46 AM on July 18, 2001

On a large scale I started thinking things were screwy when crap companies like The Globe and Xoom started getting insane valuations. I understood Yahoo! and Amazon, but these guys? Ick.

Personally I realized things were bad at our company when the snacks started to disappear. The Snack Indicator is never wrong, it means get your resume ready...
posted by owillis at 7:29 AM on July 18, 2001

Ring, ring, ring.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Lance, it's *unnamed company president here*. Can you stop by my office this afternoon before you leave for the weekend? Thanks."
posted by ljromanoff at 7:40 AM on July 18, 2001

the director of new media at my company left and took over thirty employees with him, offering stock options and insanely high salaries. two months later, the company was dead. about two months after that came the crash. strangely, it was really hard to believe that things were going south even though we had all known it was going to happen since the early nineties.
posted by xammerboy at 7:41 AM on July 18, 2001

For me, it was when Pyra passed the hat to buy a new server. That was not a good sign.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:36 AM on July 18, 2001

The Snack Index never fails. When our massuse(sp??) stopped showing up, when and we stopped having the alcohol fueled friday nite happy hours, I new something was up.
posted by jbelshaw at 8:49 AM on July 18, 2001

I did a week's freelance work for lastminute.com before they launched; when they announched their flotation (IPO) share price, I knew the game was up. They were good, yes, but they weren't that good.
posted by holgate at 8:56 AM on July 18, 2001

The minute my first batch of pre-IPO options vested. That had to be the beginning of the end.

Everything I touch turns to shit.
posted by TiggleTaggleTiger at 10:03 AM on July 18, 2001

s/new/knew...
posted by jbelshaw at 11:45 AM on July 18, 2001

Everything I touch turns to shit.

(Two cops standing by a dead body slumped over a toilet)
"What the hell happened?"
"Death by exhaustion, Sarge. He never knew when to stop wiping, the poor bastard."
posted by dong_resin at 12:52 PM on July 18, 2001

jbelshaw: we stopped having the alcohol fueled friday nite happy hours.

When the wednesday lunches became alcohol fueled instead...
posted by tj at 1:25 PM on July 18, 2001

When boo.com fell. Just a few days into its opening we knew it was cheesy, but things were confirmed when the shit hit the fan. Then the rest fell like dominoes.
posted by wackybrit at 3:01 PM on July 18, 2001