.COM. Rise and Fall. Review on Building a Website

There are a couple questions that needs to be addressed:

1. What made .COM popular?

It's very easy to open and close a company. With$2000, I could establish a company, buy a computer and fax machine and necessary office accessories. What else do I need? Web space and if I knew how to program and maintain it that would be just great. You could do this at home. All you need is a server that might cost about$3000 to start with, and a software's which are very cheap to buy. In-fact I could do this on a remote server if I were to pay$50-$100 a month. Now my company is established. What else do I need? An idea. There are lot of business models available I could use or Great if I had a new one. Either way all that matters is money. And Ideas were not that hard to obtain. Its just transforming a daily activity to a web based activity. As simple as that. People started using web for all their activities, and it went on great. More and more companies added to the list. I always thought when I saw the .COM boom. Will it stay for too long? Because I had seen the Y2K Fall.

IT WAS BAD. And most of the time there would be no investment in marketing. A couple rolling ads and search engine registrations could have done the job. Provide some offers on the Internet like free mp3 and fancy unrealistic gifts, and users would register on that site for free. And more the data they had more were the prospects of business. Some of the. COM's just earned money for sending mails and users reading it. How difficult is that? For every 1000 mails you send there is a good probability of over 100 being read. A mailing list made the money. How much did it cost them to send those mails? FREE!.

1. When did it start?

I think it all started in mid 90's with Java being released as a cross platform development tool with companies trying to develop more sophisticated software technologies. It was thought of a better way as the technology market boomed. During late 90's it picked pace and reached its peak at that time. I once heard on the radio while I was driving in NJ, a commentary about NASDAQ doing great and that by November they expect it to touch 5000 points. Did that happen?

1. The leaders stay. What about followers?

It's always been that way. In the 50's I have heard of every Tom, Dick and Harry manufacturing car in America. The same thing happened then. Ssmaller fishes were swallowed by the bigger ones, some found it hard to survive and died, some nurtured the other bigger ones and finally concentrated to a few. The same has happened to .COM today. Price-line is a very good example, It was one of the hottest site a year back. Today there are hardly any traces of that company. Microsoft, SUN, Borland, Intel, Motorola and similar giants brought technology to the market. They captured small fishes and survived the race. Microsoft bought the most popular Internet mail site used by almost every computer user. It was started by an Indian with actually very little investment. Today its MSN HOTMAIL.

1. Is Java the solution to .COM?

Honestly no, the greatest advantage of Java is its inter platform operability and high security through Applets. But I do not see a reason why people develop anything and everything in Java. That's bullshit. Its like saying I will pay you$100 even though I owe you$10. Yes, Java is good and suits some applications, not everything. I m writing this because I know being in computer field, more than 7 projects out of 10 written in Java were scrapped. It was a waste of money, investing in something for no returns. There are some very good applications developed using Java. Some of them are seen more with online trading and banking. Has anyone used the CITIBANK SUVIDHA bank account in India. It's the slowest I have seen so far, while comparing to any other bank account. Many others use simpler techniques and make things faster keeping security in mind. My point here is'UNNECESSARY HYPE'.

1. Did we get what we wanted?

Actually, Yes. As an end user we got what we wanted. We kept the ideas that we liked. Others disappeared. Some of the things that helped us are, online banking, real time online trading, Airline booking/ Reservations. Access to information readily at home. What else do we need?

1. What caused .COM failure?

This is hard to answer question and is debatable. What I think is that the supply increased without assessing demand. People thought that was the easiest way to make money. Well, yes, at one point of time it was true. But ultimately turned out false. Here is a very good example, I owned some 2000 stocks of Northpoint Communications, a couple days after I bought the stock value depreciated about$4/share lesser than what I had invested. I sold my stocks immediately. That was really a smart move from my side, and that's what I feel today. If I did not do that then. I would have ended up in greater loss. That company is bankrupt today and the stocks trades on OTHER OTC at NASDAQ. The price of that stock a couple days before was a penny or two.

1. Is it really the delay in US elections that caused the downfall?

Honestly, I don't know the answer to this. Some economist's say, that was the starting point, others say economy needed some correction and did not show up till the elections.

1. Did the Tech Market really fall?

I think the answer is Yes, but not as much compared to what people think. The reason for the fall is the over-ambitious growth of companies. Let's take this example. CISCO, a networking company, their stocks were hottest in the market. Anyone would just blindly buy CISCO for the market price. Was the price of CISCO worth the stock? SUN, LUCENT, INTEL, HP, MOTOROLA all faced the same problems. Most of these companies are reporting positive earnings. Sales are not too good, but I think its not bad either keeping in mind the present market situation. They are growing, slowly but steadily now. Growth now looks like a linear graph. These are all good companies in my point of view but what I m trying to say is that, the market price of a stock was high due to demand. Don't blame the economy. The expectation among people is still high, and will take time to be realistic. Lets look at a different scenario Insurance companies for that matter, I have hardly seen any insurance company going out of business. Why is that? They have established themselves in a good way. Insurance companies don't open and close their businesses. Their business goals are clear and their growth is steady. Most of the insurance companies are decades old, and have grown over a period of time. Not with HYPES. Anyone can take a company to great heights.

• What we need is clear goals and right vision.

My View:'DONT FOLLOW A FOLLOWER. BE YOUR OWN LEADER YOU KNOW WHAT YOU NEED AND WORK TOWARDS ACHIEVING IT'