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Summary: Kaplan shows his inner beauty in this book and shows that he
Review: may have been abused as a small child. But, seriously, the book rocked, good work dude.
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Summary: A Hemingway in the making!
Review: Pure genius! Mr. Kaplan's insight into the Dot-com fiasco is a spine tingling, nail biting, edge-of-your-seat thriller. My only complaint is that there isn't a sequel (yet :). Bravo Mr. Kaplan!
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Summary: An Irreverent, Profane, and Addicting Read
Review: OK, I'll admit it: I'm a f'd company.com junkie, so buying Pud's book was a no-brainer. If you're looking for learned musings and profound business thought, look elsewhere. "F'd Companies" is written in the style of an Internet bulletin board - reading more like graffiti than The Wall Street Journal. But that's not a bad thing. Kaplan's crudely cynical critiques of ill-conceived businesses are outlandish and darkly humorous. In rapid-fire case after case, he recounts the foibles of 20-somethings as they burn through tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that venture capitalists and corporations are all to willing to throw at them. A few excerpts: On Digiscents, which spend $20M on a device to plug into your computer to produce "smells" relevant to the content viewed:
"Besides, potential customers weren't too keen on having a bunch of nasty-smelling chemicals pumped up their noses." Or "Flooz", the infamous Internet "alternate currency", which flushed over $50M in a couple of years, but also attracted thieves in Russia and the Philippines who used stolen credit cards to rack up over $300K in Flooz dollars. And eHobbies, the failed online Hobby Shop, which claimed bird-watching a $34B industry - four-times larger than movie-going. When these figures were challenged in a story by The Wall Street Journal, a spokesperson explained the figures included things like "binoculars, hats, sunglasses, cameras, and bird-houses, and expenses incurred on bird watching trips, such as gas, hotels, the cost of renting a tent ... sales of log cabins, boats and trunks." I would have liked to have seen a bit more of the tales told by employees of the "F'd Companies", which make up such an important part of the website. And after a while, Pud's rants and profanity become tiresome - better taken in smaller, daily website-sized bites than in an entire book. Yet I still found the book amusing and addictive, and Kaplan's self-modesty a refreshing contrast to the arrogant and elitist attitudes of the executives and investors of whom he writes. Above all else, Kaplan captures the silliness and self-importance of the dot.com hype in a style that is unique to the Internet counter-culture. While certainly not a literary triumph, "F'd Companies" is an important reflection on this bizarre period of US business, and as such will outlast most of the dot.coms that were founded during these years.
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Summary: Been there, done that...
Review: Another dot com bubble book released about a year too late. Nothing to see here. Isn't it all just a repeat of the website content anyway?
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Summary: Alas!
Review: This is a book needed to be written about the dotcom disaster. Other books, like DOTCON, try to exhault and rationalize their subject, when what really happened defies reason. Philip J Kaplan's tone is a little juvenile but the subject certainly deserves it and his assessment of the dotcom world makes for fascinating and hilarious reading. I'm not too familiar with his site but this book is a fun bit of popular history of a remarkable era.
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Summary: Very good erotic reading!
Review: Although Mr. Kaplan is a staunch pedophile just waiting to be rounded up by operation: CANDYMAN, he is still able to string some words together to make coherent sentences. Only in a couple passages is it clearly evident that he was off his medication. Fortunately, his editor (who is also his regular dealer) was able to make the much needed corrections to Kaplan's work that would understandably be made by anyone with his junior high school level education (he would have stayed on in school had the rape charges not come up).
While it was touching to read the dedication he made to his out-of-wedlock child in the begining of the book, it was difficult to figure out why he didn't include his own failed dot-com business (a web-based murder-for-hire service) in the contents
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Summary: Philip Kaplan has done it again
Review: giving it 5 stars would be a bit of a stretch, but overall I found it to be a great read from beginning to end.
quite an eye opener, giving you a behind the scenes look into the seedy world of dotcoms.
too bad about the ugly cover, even though that shade of red is my favorite.
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Summary: PUD is as F*(^%ED As the Dot Coms
Review: This book is a very sad rant by Pud (Kapaln), himself a washed out dot.commer. Here is a guy who rips into many companies from which he ran banners on his site. They became F&*#ED when he could not longer get them to advertise. (HotJobs for example.) Anyone who actually is able to learn anything from this garbage probably did not pass Business 1A. All in all, a waste of paper.
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Summary: Front-line insight, questionable format
Review: It's a shame that so much money was wasted in the dot-com onslaught in the mid 90s. Philip Kaplan gives a pretty good and basic account of why some of these companies burned out ( and burned through millions of dollars) in the blink of an eye. However questionable his insight is to some readers, I'm sure many will be turned off be the profane nature of the writing.
I know what you are thinking. You buy a book with a title like "F'd Companies" you'd expect some profanity. But this book seems to be written in the style of: " Lets see how many times I can use the F word and various combinations of the F word, plus other curse words" Although amusing, it just gets downright tiresome to read page after page. If you really want this book, place it where your kids can't reach it.
A quick and dirty read, pick it up cheap if you can.
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Summary: Excellent!!! Now this is quality entertainment!
Review: Philip J. Kaplan didn't set out to chronicle the disappointment and wrath of so many dot-commers burned by the internet bubble. But one Memorial Day weekend in 2000, trying to kill some time, Kaplan ( a web designer at the time) set up a site, F**kedcompany.com. The site offered the latest gossip about sinking dot-coms and even included an online betting pool on when companies would go under. Kaplan suddenly found himself thrust into the spotlight as a kind of overseer of the dot-com collapse. And while Kaplan often refers to himself as an "idiot" throughout the book, he nonetheless clearly loves the hype generated by his website. He has been profiled by "The New York Times," "Salon.com," and ABC News's "20/20." among others. In this book, Kaplan offers capsule descriptions of about 150 of the looniest ideas and largest implosions. Kaplan reveals how many millions the companies burned through and gives, in sometimes clever but crude language, his sarcastic explanation for the failure of the many companies he skewers. He garnered much of his information from the website. His website's betting pool assigned high scores to those submitting the best information about coming dot-com catastrophes. There was no actual monetary payout, winning is its own reward.) he was inundated with e-mails from employees, who were often angry, bitter, or just out to stick a knife in an occasional back, reporting rumors of pending layoffs, shutdowns, and bankruptcies. As more companies failed, an almost sick fascination with the site grew, its notoriety spread, and disgruntled employees continued to send thousands of e-mails regarding various internet companies. The information often turned out to be accurate, that reading the postings was like knowing a train wreck was coming and having to set up near the tracks and watch. And people clearly loved watching company after company flameout and wreck. The book spotlights many companies, among them: the sports site MVP.com, Webvan, and some you may never have heard of, such as little known Third Voice. Third Voice's pitch? It offered what amounted to virtual "sticky notes" which could be attached to websites. It had no real practical application, other than to potential muck up the websites of other businesses, yet investors poured some $15 million into the company. Like his website, the book maintains a satirical tone which both amuses and irritates at times. The book may not be quite as timely as Kaplan might hope as there have been numerous other recent books which have chronicled the idiocy of the internet explosion. Still, Kaplan had a front row seat for much of the implosion, and it certainly makes for an entertaining read.
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