Fucked Company
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Fucked Company was a web site created by Philip J. Kaplan as a "dot-com dead pool" where players could compete to see who could most accurately predict which dot-com companies would be the next to fold, screw up, or otherwise embarrass themselves.
The site's name is a parody of Fast Company, a magazine that, along with Upside, Red Herring, and Wired, was a tireless booster of the Internet dot-com boom of the mid to late 1990s.
The site became an underground hit, with users finding out about it via word of mouth. Eventually, Kaplan realized he had a potential money maker on his hands and added free and for-pay services like rumor listings and discussion boards. As of late 2000, Kaplan claimed site revenues of US$80,000 per month based on subscriptions to his rumor-alert service (Kaplan claimed most of the subscribers were headhunters).
As of June 7, 2006, Kaplan is no longer actively maintaining the Fucked Company site. New "fucks" are no longer being added. Also as of June 7, 2006, the site's General Message Board has been shut down. Previously, visitors to the site could add and read comments about the latest news stories on "fucked" companies in a section of the web site known as the "Happy Fun Slander Corner" or simply "HFSC." Originally the General Message Board had been designated as the place where such comments were to be made, but once HFSC was added nearly all discussion on the various failing companies occured in HFSC and not the General Message Board. After the addition of HFSC, the General Message Board became a discussion board having little - if anything - to do with "fucked" companies or business. According to Alexa, in recent years, nearly all traffic from the FuckedCompany site came through the controversial General Message Board. With the end of the General Message Board, many long time regular posters were left without an Internet home.
Kaplan has made no formal announcement regarding the Fucked Company web site, though his personal web site provides a hint through Kaplan's use of the past tense when refering to his involvement with FuckedCompany. Kaplan's personal web site now states that before his current professional position, he "ran Fuckedcompany.com".