TheGlobe: An Unhappy Puppy

Baldwin Louie — Mon, 06 Aug 2001 15:00:00 -0700

Excuse us? We're sorry, but we couldn't quite hear that. Ah, TheGlobe.com is about to shut down its site. Born with a media bang, TheGlobe is on it way out with a whimper.

Unable to make a profit, TheGlobe announced Friday that it is closing its community site and Web-hosting biz on Aug. 15. The few outlets that reported the announcement noted that it was made after the stock market had closed, a move that made Grok wonder, why bother? When a company's stock is trading at 13 cents, does it even have to bother with such proprieties? The site closing and resulting layoffs, however, weren't the only news. TheGlobe also said everything else it owns, including game sites such as Happy Puppy, is up for sale. Translation? The company is about to shut down, at least according to AtNewYork's unnamed sources.

Aside from offering prepared statements, company execs were mum. So reporters resorted to revisiting TheGlobe's chattier days. Scribes favored a handful of modifiers that can be handily rolled into one cliche-happy sentence: The onetime highflier, which experienced a 600 percent IPO pop, became a poster child for the Net's heyday. For those who crave more details, Reuters' Eric Auchard's filing gave a lengthy summary of TheGlobe's tortured history. Only AtNewYork's account acknowledged the company's recent efforts to sustain itself, noting that it had recently landed "big-name advertisers like Coca-Cola and Orbitz" for its gaming sites.

Few other outlets detected a heartbeat. Maybe most felt that since TheGlobe had been covered ad nauseum, there was little left to say. As the New York Post anticlimactically wrote about the company's co-founders, one has penned a memoir and the other "remains at the company, without much money." No wonder they say "no comment."

Theglobe Starts to Crumble
TheStandard.com

Theglobe to Close Site, Cut Staff
Forbes.com (Reuters)

theglobe.com to Close Communities
AtNewYork.com

Globe Staff Spinning From 50% Cuts
New York Post

TheGlobe.com to cut staff, fold sites
CNET.com

Theglobe.com Spins To A Halt
Newsbytes.com

Lack of Advertising Forces Theglobe.com to Shut Web Sites
New York Times
(Registration required.)

Onetime Highflier theglobe.com To Trim Offerings, Cut More Jobs
The Wall Street Journal
(Paid subscription required.)

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TheGlobe: An Unhappy Puppy