Mobile-Phone Technology Moves Toward Nirvana

The Fake Economy -- A Case Study

from the how-things-look-in-retrospect dept

Mon, Jun 30th 2003 2:19am — Mike Masnick

A few weeks ago we had a story that was an excerpt from the new book about AOL during their rise called, Stealing Time. Now, the San Jose Mercury News has their own review of the book, calling it a "Case study" (pun intended) of the "fake economy" and proceeds to talk about how the book shows the fundamental flaws behind AOL's strategies and the whole "dot com era" that came crashing down. Now, the excerpt is fascinating, and I'll probably get around to reading the full book. However, I don't buy the idea that AOL was brought down by "the end of the internet era" or that the "new economy" was the "fake economy". AOL was brought down by bad execution and bad management decisions, not by any fundamental flaw in the internet economy.

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Chris, 30 Jun 2003 @ 7:15am

The new economy was fake
The online advertising economy was fake; AOL and other portals fattened up their advertising revenues by performing "cashectomies" on newly-funded dot-coms in exchange for "exclusive" ad deals. Even if AOL hadn't resorted to fraudulent barter transactions to boost revenues, most of their ad revenues were from unsustainable sources (e.g. dot-coms that were focused on IPO rather than ROI).
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MLS, 4 Feb 2009 @ 4:41am

The Fake Economy -- A Case Study
A multiple listing service's database and software is used by real estate brokers representing sellers under a listing contract to widely share information about properties with real estate brokers who may represent potential buyers or wish to cooperate with a seller's broker in finding a buyer for the property. The listing data stored in a multiple listing service's database is the proprietary information of the broker who has obtained a listing agreement with a property's seller.

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MLS
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