Bubble 1.0 Hype Ideas Brought Back To Life By 2.0 Companies
from the well,-look-at-that... dept
It's been amusing watching all of the ridiculous PR-generating gimmicks from the original dot com bubble come back to life over the last couple years from new companies who are either using the same playbook or too new at the game to know that it's been done before. For example, remember the online travel startup TravelZoo? In order to enter the already overcrowded online travel market and still get some traction, the company promised shares of stock to early users. While there were plenty of questions about the legality of this, it appears that the company played by the rules and didn't violate any kind of securities law (which seems surprising, since offering any kind of shares in a private company usually requires an awful lot of very specific hoops that you need to jump through) -- and it even paid off for some users of the site who were able to make some money. Unfortunately, the gimmick ended up costing Travelzoo a lot more than it expected. Either way, there's some random new company out there that's trying to do something similar, promising stock to users for performing certain actions within their site. Again, this should raise a number of legal questions, but the site's founders insist that it's okay because they're not actually issuing shares, just allocating them to be issued at the point of a liquidity event. It's not clear that a securities regulator would feel the same way about it. Publicly offering any kind of equity tends to require some very, very careful steps for any company to take, and you'd have to image that the potential risks from violating securities law could be a lot greater than any brief burst of (non-product-related) publicity this kind of gimmick generates.
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The shares were worthless and he kept asking for toilet paper!
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Travelzoo is still around isn't it?
Yeah it sounds pretty iffy. But I still see Travelzoo advertising around, so who knows.
The worst thing I keep hearing lately is 'the business model is secondary'. If that's true, re-start Kozmo and prove it.
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Re: GoblinJuice
Is that Goblin Juice as in General Johnson Jameson's Goblin Juice?
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yea right
I would say that they have some BS legal team to make sure they are legit. but having a legal team to find the loop holes should tell anyone that they are not legit. anyone that needs to have a legal team is just as much a linging SOB as a lawyer not can be trusted. :)
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Re: yea right
i meant 'none can be trusted' not 'not can be trusted' sorry about that :)
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any and all layers should be put on a island with fags and fucking nucked with the biggest nuck there is fuck all lawyers and fags
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hell yea fuck all lawyers and fags
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It's an interesting one
You have to admit, however sketchy this model is, it lends itself very well to people who want to be in with a chance of making some real money. Which is alot of people.
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Well... if the TravelZoo guys got paid off. Maybe the fellows doing this thing might eventually get paid off.
Id like to know how much the TravelZoo fellows were paid off.
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crappy spelling is gay
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Re: Re: GoblinJuice
Don't forget the Werewolf Punch. =D
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