March 15, 2001

by Steve Baldwin

The Web is a future-oriented medium that's "Orwellian" in the sense that it systematically self-deletes all traces of its past. Consequently, it is likely that future historians will have a terribly difficult time making sense of our era, because so very few original digital artifacts of our recent era (1995-2000) will remain in, say, the year 2020. As George Santayana so memorably noted, "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it"; this exhibit - The Museum of E-Failure - is an attempt to save as many artifacts of our cyber-history as possible, so that history can learn from our generation's mistakes, and not repeat them. It is also an attempt to come to grips with the Web's odd aesthetic of 1995-2001 - call it "CyberKitsch".

A commercial note: an outsourced designer at mpxreview created a design for the Museum of E-Failure's Dead Dot-Bomb Mousepad. As the copy says, "you can roll your mouse over these logos in exactly the same fashion that reality employed to crush the companies they once represented".

These pads are $15 at the Ghost Sites Store - I bought one myself, and I think they look pretty sharp and provide excellent mouse traction.

Awards this month for Outstanding Webleological Achievement using the Ghost-o-Meter go to: g3m5tar, hesby, BWind, mzarnosky, lincoln, renee, kidrockfan, rnorton, pbruder, maxibia, ruchirp, ProfOwl, DFIFE, nilesh_acharya, a_nilesh, tmorgan, mchakrabarty, mgmadden, gypsy, christ, brian_patrick00, ==*lucas-teamclermont*== , cornponecaller, and other true archeologists of digital detritus!


New Dot-Bomb Screenshots
(uploaded 3/15/2001)
This update was compiled from screen shots taken between 1/1/01 and 3/15/01. Note: not all of these sites are "dead", in the sense of causing a "This Page Cannot Be Displayed" message to be shown to the user. But all are endangered, so an effort was made to record them before they are "unplugged".

24x7.com
agrupate.com
andysgarage.com
b2bmarketplace.com
beseen.com
bikeshop.com
brandpoint.com
brandwise.com
cdworld.com
charitableway.com
checkout.com
chipshot.com
cybercrop.com
dodots.com
driveway.com
efdex.com
epod.com
etoys.com
equalfooting.com
exlearn.com
flightfuninternational.com
foodline.com
foodusa.com
freeworks.com
gamers.com
geocast.com
gettingit.com
heavyware.com
hitcomedy.com
icecreamvan.com
housenet.com
importnow.com
internetuniversity.com
iproperty.com
itknowledge.com
iuma.com
jacknabbit.com
kentvoss.com
localmusic.com
lovemail.com
med-equipmentmagazine.com
mothernature.com
mst3000.com
officeclick.com
outdoorliving.com
orientation.com
personalgenie.com
popawheelie.com
planetrx.com
quantex.com
readersndex.com
refer.com
singleshop
sky web india.com
sportshuddle.com
todayssports.com
ventius.com
z.com
zapspot.com
zivago.com


Museum of E-Failure
Permanent Collection

(uploaded 1/29/2001)

24/7.com
affinia.com
angryman.com
anteye.com
apbnews.com (original Sidney Schamburg-era, pre-SafetyTips site)
auctions.com
babygear.com
bargainclothing.com
bbq.com
bigwords.com
bizbuyer.com
blackfamilies.com
blaze.com
boo.com
carorder.com
carpet.com
channelspace.com
clickmango.com
comro.com
couch, the
countrycool.com
cyberpark.com
cyborganic1.com
cyborganic2.com
deepcanyon.com
den.net
dreamshop.com
elingo.com
entertaindom.com
eseated.com
esociety.com
etoys_uk.com
eve.com
exchangepath.com
ezcd.com
financialprinter.com
foodline.com
freeride.com
furniture.com
garden.com
gazelle.com
giftemporia.com
gear.com
go.com
greatcoffee.com
greatentertaining.com
healthshop.com
heavensgate.com
hollywoodtickets.com
homewarehouse.com
hotoffice.com
hsupply.com
iam.com
ibelieve.com
icanbuy.com
icast.com
ichoose.com
iguide.com
iguide2.com
industrialvortex.com
internetfilezone.com
is_that_a_fact
iturf1.com
iturf2.com
ivendor.com
kablink.com
kibu.com
lifejacket.com
living.com
mambo.com
mercata.com
mortgage.com
miadora.com
mothernature.com
mungopark.com
mytalk.com
nationstreet.com
netheartbeat.com
netizen_tv
numbernine.com
omni.com
onepricecds.com
pandesic.com
pathfinder1.com
pathfinder2.com
petstore.com
phys.com
pixelon.com
planetID.com
politicallyblack.com
powerdime.com
pseudo1.com
pseudo2.com
pseudo3.com
puertabella.com
pupule.com
pushconcepts.com
quepasa.com
redconnect.com
radnet.com
redgorrila.com
redrocket.com
riffage.com
savishopper.com
shopaudiovideo.com
sixdegrees.com
snaki.com
sock_puppet1
sock_puppet2
soldout.com
soulpurpose.com
stim.com
stockpower.com
streamline.com
strobe.com
subrights.com
swoon.com
theman.com
theconvergence.com
thesite.com
thespot.com
thingworld.com
thirsty.com
timedance.com
totalnewyork1.com
totanewyork2.com
tradeinteriors.com
tshirtguy.com
tutornet.com
ubo.com
urbanfetch.com
urbandesign.com
valueamerica.com
violet.com
volume.com
vroom.com
whiplash.com
wholetree.com
womansconsumer.com
xenote.com
ypn1.com
ypn2.com
zatso.net
zebramart.com
ziplink.com
zoomsandiego.com
 



buy a museum of e-failure mousepad, always in stock at the ghost sites store


Ghost-o-Meter

You're on the web a lot. You've seen many a dead site. You've forgotten our email address... and you don't feel like coming back here to get it.

What do you do?

Ghost-o-Meter
(javascript required)

The Ghost-o-Meter opens a small, movable window... if you've found a Ghost Site, fill in the blanks, fire it off, and go back to foolin' around. Its that easy.

You can also use this form:




What the ??!

Well, this is all very interesting, but what the heck is Ghost Sites anyway? Why devote a live site to Dead Sites?

If you're interested in this Ghost Sites thing, it is a project that I began in the summer of 1996 while I was working for Time-Warner's Pathfinder. Late in the evening of July 4th, while piloting a small craft across Long Island Sound, I had what only can be described as an epiphany.

From out of the depths came a cruel vision of the World Wide Web. It wasn't a friendly place - an innocent place of community, commerce and chat. It was a great and utterly pitiless electronic ocean that swallowed up sites, careers, and venture capital like a ravenous killer whale. Great sites - sites like Mecklerweb and iGuide - were going down with all hands. Great fortunes were collapsing and proud content sites lay wrecked on the bottom. No one seemed to care. The future was a vast abyss - who would record these days of New Media folly, disaster and despair?

Back on shore, but still haunted by this vision, I launched Ghost Sites as a modest attempt to document the great disappearing fleet of web sites sinking beneath the waves. This project briefly made me spectacularly famous, and then I was quickly, and completely forgotten.

By March of 1997, Ghost Sites had succumbed to the same deadly entropy that had settled over the Internet, and became a crewless wreck itself. For six cruel months, it drifted like a despised garbage barge, broke its keel in a summer squall, and finally washed up on Geocities.

On an icy November morning, Morbus boarded the wreck, inspected the damage, and offered the captain a safe harbor. The bilge pump was started, and the squealing, rusty hull lifted off the sands again. It soon arrived here - in the dark, unquiet waters of Disobey.Com.

If you want to see the article that made me briefly famous, check out Ghosts in the Machine. I became so famous because of this article that there were women lining up to see me - I felt like Elvis! But then... the fall from grace...

If you have a favorite rotting site that you'd like to mention, email me at Steve_Baldwin@hotmail.com.

Ghost Sites has appeared in a number of places including Time Magazine, ZDNet, The Netly News and more. For a list of all those we know of, as well as links to online counterparts, click here. You can also take a look at the limited edition t-shirt we once offered.


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