• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, March 3, 2004

This past weekend you probably spent some time with our dear friend, Oscar.

The Academy Awards were fun and as always they highlighted some of the best moments from motion pictures of this past year. Since one of my favorite parts of the Academy Awards show is when they run the retrospective that pays homage to the past winners who are no longer with us, I thought I'd take this opportunity to run a little retrospective of my own. Lets feature some past Internet Companies who had their day in the sun, left an impact on our industry today, but are also no longer with us.

First of all... The Globe. The Globe was the site that "started it all" so to speak. The first to go public, and one of the first to go under. It can be credited with signaling the rise and fall of the Internet bubble by some people, and as a sign of excess my many more. To this day, I can't remember what it was all about, but that's one of many reasons they never made it. Their lasting impact? Hype. Pure, unadulterated hype.

Then there was Firefly. For many of you that remember, Firefly was a profiling engine, which was purchased and rolled up into another company at the time (I seem to remember it being Engage, but I could be wrong). Firefly promised the future of dynamic ad-generation coupled with targeting relevancy. The idea was great, and many of its core ideas are in use today by sites such as Yahoo! and Amazon, but unfortunately it never took off as much as they thought.

What about Softbank Interactive? This was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, ad-sales rep firms in the old days. They repped all the big sites (I think they even repped Yahoo! originally), and they had more sales people than they knew what to do with. Their legacy lives on as some of the best sales folks today can claim lineage from Softbank, but the rep firm model has seen its share of difficulties and never owned the category the way that Softbank had envisioned it.

Next we have Pointcast. "Push Media" was the buzzword of the month, and Pointcast was "da bomb." It proved to be exactly that, as it blew up a year or so after the buzz, but the concept of "push" has had an impact and can be seen in how ads are capable of larger k-sizes as well as how companies such as Desksite and Maven are updating the concept today.

Flycast was one of my favorites, with their optimization engine and strong customer service back around 1999. They were also acquired by Engage, and eventually shuttered in what I am still waiting to see become a full-blown grad student thesis. Their technology was excellent, and remnants of it are still utilized by Doubleclick and Advertising.com, but the whole tool was never resurrected, unfortunately.

Last but not least... Kozmo. My all-time favorite Internet Company! At any time of day I could order a DVD and a pack of gum and it would be delivered to my home. It was great. Bad business model, no margin whatsoever, but still a great idea. Their legacy? Not too sure, but I still loved the idea.

The days of Industry Standard parties (or magazines) are gone, but the ideas are still "alive and kickin" (thank you to "Simple Minds" for the use of this cliché). What companies do you see today that are utilizing technology, which you think will have an impact on tomorrow? Let us know what you think.