BabyPressConference.com was a project launched by Lee Perlman, a well-connected hospital admistrator who was the president of the New York Hospital Association. The idea was simple: give parents a way to narrowcast, in a full-motion, 30FPS video stream, the first images of their newborn to members of their immediate family.

Wiring maternity wards wasn't too instrinsically expensive; most hospitals already had fast T1 lines by the late 1990s, and it was just a matter of installing a video workstation capable of broadcasting the show. So Perlman dipped into one of his companies and pulled out $1.5 million to get the show going.

The service, which launched in March of 2000, was an immediate hit, both with parents and with the press, who loved any story combining technology with youth. Scaling the program up to hundreds of maternity rooms, however, meant attracting additional funds, and shortly after launch BabyPressConference negotiated $6.5 million in equity from a number of investors, including Primedia and Toys 'R Us. Both investors hoped to use the network to hawk their wares, doling out a share to BabyPressConference.com in what was essentially an affiliate relationship. BabyPressConference.com's only other real way of making money was to sell 30-minute CD-ROM recordings of the streamed events for $29.95, not enough money to charge to cover production costs.

So the business model was shaky from the beginning, and as BabyPressConference grew so did the costs. By June of 2000 it had reached just 35 maternity wards, with announced plans to reach 100 by the end of the year. By every measure it was a success with its users, and more than 3,000 parents opted to use the service. Who wouldn't opt for a free service whose only costs (the CD-ROM) were optional?

Unfortunately, the investment climate in 2000-01 grew chilly, and BabyPressConference's 100 percent share of the maternity ward broadcast market didn't immunize it from the money-losing reality. In early 2001, just before the dotcom bubble burst, it raised another $4.9 million from investors but that was the last cash input it would ever receive. By October of 2002, the site had closed, the service shut off, and the investment of more than $10 million written off.

In retrospect, it's easy what went wrong with BabyPressConference.com. If its service really had any value (and its many users clearly liked it), it should have had the guts to charge them something fair, say $100 for a streamcast. If the parents balked at this charge, they could have probably gotten the money from Grandpa or Grandma. But by depending so completely on an unproven business model (affiliate sales) and on investors' continued willingness to foot the bill for continued losses, it sealed its own fate.

But it's still a great idea, in fact Lee Perlman, the site's founder, clearly has a problem letting it go, because he still lists BabyPressConference.com as a going concern on his ZoomInfo page.