Where are they now: AllAdvantage.com

But these moves were not enough to offset operating costs. According to Calvi, when the company decided to pull its IPO in 2000, AllAdvantage had grown to over 1,000 employees, had offices and staff in four continents, and not a penny in profit to show. "When the IPO market froze and CPM rates collapsed the burn rate was astronomical," recalls Calvi.

The losses could not be stopped, and the site closed in February 2001.

Where Are They Now? Johannes Pohle is the founder of Brightrise & Boostwell, an online marketing agency. Oliver Brock is assistant professor for the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The Standard attempted to contact all three without success. In November 2006, several AllAdvantage founders -- including co-founder Carl Anderson -- launched a similar pay-to-surf company called AGLOGO, which subsequently closed in December 2007.

Calvi is now CEO of voice and data service provider Clearfly Communications. He notes that even though AllAdvantage didn't survive, the behavioral marketing model that it helped pioneer is alive and well.

"As time has proven, the behavioral marketing concept is extremely powerful," Calvi says. "Witness the investments made by the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! in this field in the last few years. Certainly the 'Get Paid to Surf the Web' marketing program, albeit extremely successful in terms of signups, skewed the userbase toward specific demographics, and that made our audience appealing only to certain advertisers. Some people attributed the fall of the company to the cost of paying users for their surfing time, but at today's average CPC and CPM rates, that business model [could be] viable."

The AllAdvantage.com homepage now redirects to surveysmax.com, an online survey service, which is in turn operated by ResellOne.Net, a company that describes itself as "one of the world's largest domain resellers."

Were you an employee, customer, or client of this service? Then share your memories below! What did you like about the company? What didn't work? What other factors contributed to its success or failure?

Earlier Where are they now? profiles:

• eToys (May 2008)
• Webvan (May 2008)
• Pets.com (May 2008)
• Boo (May 2008)
• TheGlobe.com (May 2008)
• Entertaindom (May 2008)
• Excite@Home (May 2008)
• Kozmo (May 2008)
• Garden.com (May 2008)
• DrKoop.com (May 2008)