The online world may be filled with doom and gloom, but that suits Robert Kaplan fine. Known as Pud to 6 million visitors to his website, fuckedcompany.com, and 45,000 recipients of his email newsletters, Kaplan has made going bust, if not a virtue, at least a source for his considerable humour.
Kaplan, 24, started the site for himself and his friends. Visitors choose five dotcoms. If the chosen company starts having problems - layoffs, funding problems, or total collapse - the player gets points.
There are now more than 20,000 players and more than 2,400 internet companies are listed as heading for the scrap heap. Moreover, the site has become a valued place for anyone involved in the internet, since dotcom insiders are invited to list new f***s there first. As a measure of its importance the site was recently named Yahoo Site of the Year and made Time magazine's 'Best of 2000' list.
As hundreds of dotcoms collapse or struggle for survival - an estimated 31,000 workers have lost their jobs this year - Kaplan is not short of ammuni tion. Every f*** gets a brief synopsis of why it was such a bad business idea in the first place.
Last week, for instance, RealNames.com laid off 20 employees. 'Good job!' wrote Kaplan. 'The funny part is that they say it has nothing to do with the current state of the dotcom business - rather, it's a "sign of success" because it has to do with a "restructuring" and a change of business model. So what makes that different than any other dotcom these days?'
Kaplan insists: 'It started out just for fun and it's still just for fun.'
