DrinkExchange was a monthly social and business networking party started in San Francisco, California during the dot com bubble. [1] [2]
The event was started in February, 1997 [3] by Ali Partovi, co-founder of the Internet firm LinkExchange, [4] and his roommate-coworkers Alan Shusterman and Mike Bayle, who were initially looking to find ways to improve their social life. [3] The format was humorously based on LinkExchange's early ad exchange model (though not formally affiliated with the company), by which web publishers could trade two outgoing "clicks" on banner ads placed on their site for one visitor backlink from other publishers. At the events, participants were encouraged to buy two alcoholic drinks, and give one to a fellow guest. [3]
Invitations to the initial event, held at the local Gordon Biersch brewery, were in the form of a mock product announcement press release from LinkExchange, which ended up becoming a local viral email phenomenon and attracting seventy guests. Later events drew more than one thousand participants each, included corporate sponsorships, and eventually spread to Tokyo, Sydney, London, Hong Kong, San Diego, and Washington, DC. [4] [5] The parties continued until the "dot com crash" of 2001. [6]
The dot-com bubble was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Internet, resulting in a dispensation of available venture capital and the rapid growth of valuations in new dot-com startups. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, investments in the NASDAQ composite stock market index rose by 800%, only to fall 78% from its peak by October 2002, giving up all its gains during the bubble.
In BDSM culture, a play party is a social event in which attendees socialize with like-minded people and engage in BDSM activities. Generally there is an area for drinking and socializing, an area for changing into more appropriate attire, and an area for "play" or sexually arousing activities.
Pets.com was a dot-com enterprise headquartered in San Francisco, U.S, that sold pet supplies to retail customers. The website was launched in November 1998 and was shut down in November 2000. A high-profile marketing campaign gave it a widely recognized public presence, including an appearance in the 1999 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and an advertisement in the 2000 Super Bowl. Its popular sock puppet advertising mascot was interviewed by People magazine and appeared on Good Morning America.
A pub crawl is the act of visiting multiple pubs or bars in a single session.
Webvan was a dot-com company and grocery business that filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after 3 years of operation. It was headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. It delivered products to customers' homes within a 30-minute window of their choosing. At its peak, it offered service in ten US areas: the San Francisco Bay Area; Dallas; Sacramento; San Diego; Los Angeles; Orange County, California; Chicago; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and Atlanta, Georgia. The company had hoped to expand to 26 cities by 2001.
The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL or The Well, is a virtual community that was launched in 1985. It is one of the oldest continuously operating virtual communities. By 1993 it had 7,000 members, a staff of 12, and gross annual income of $2 million. A 1997 feature in Wired magazine called it "The world's most influential online community." In 2012, when it was last publicly offered for sale, it had 2,693 members. It is best known for its Internet forums, but also provides email, shell accounts, and web pages. Discussion topics are organized into conferences that cover broad areas of interest. User anonymity is prohibited.
NETCOM On-Line Communication Services, Inc. was an Internet service provider headquartered in San Jose, California.
South Park is a small urban park and eponymous neighborhood in the larger South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, California, consisting of 0.85 acres of public ground. The neighborhood centers on the small, oval-shaped park and South Park Street, which encircles the park. South Park is bounded by Second, Third, Bryant, and Brannan streets.
Om Prakash Malik is an Indian-American web and technology writer. He founded and wrote content for Gigaom, which he sold in 2015 after it faced financial difficulty. He authored the book Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist and articles by Malik have been published by The Wall Street Journal, Brandweek, and Crain Communications. He is now a partner at True Ventures.
Digex, Inc. was one of the first Internet service providers in the United States.
The 1999 Webby Awards were held on March 18, 1999, at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, California. IDG, which still owned the awards organization, continued to retain Tiffany Shlain to produce the awards even though the magazine division she had been working for had been shut down. Mayor Rudy Giuliani had lobbied to move the ceremony to New York City, but San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown interceded with Schlain by promising the city's support, including hosting a post-award party at the newly remodeled City Hall.
Held in San Francisco's Masonic Center for a crowd of 3,000 invited guests, the 2000 Webby Awards were widely considered the peak of the Webby Awards and a watershed of dot-com party culture. The event took place May 11, 2000, shortly before many of the event's perennial nominees and participants suffered business failures in the dot com crash.
TouchWave, Inc., was a privately held Palo Alto, California IP-telephony network switch provider founded in 1997. TouchWave developed a product line called WebSwitch that was designed to replace traditional private telephone exchange systems in small-to-medium-sized companies. WebSwitch was part of a phone system that incorporates communication features provided by the Internet. The rapid success of TouchWave was memorialized with awards and an acquisition by Ericsson Communications for $46M two years after TouchWave was founded. Ericsson continued the TouchWave product line under the name WebCom, but its efforts have been viewed as less than successful.
"Drinking the Kool-Aid" is strongly believing in and accepting a deadly, deranged, or foolish ideology or concept based only upon the overpowering coaxing of another; the expression is also used to refer to a person who wrongly has faith in a possibly doomed or dangerous idea because of perceived potential high rewards. The phrase typically carries a negative connotation. It can also be used ironically or humorously to refer to accepting an idea or changing a preference due to popularity, peer pressure, or persuasion. In recent years, it has evolved further to mean extreme dedication to a cause or purpose, so extreme that one would "drink the Kool-Aid" and die for the cause.
Greg Yuchang Tseng is a Taiwanese-born American Internet entrepreneur. He is co-founder and current CEO of social networking website Tagged and was CEO of JumpStart Technologies, LLC.
sfGirl.com was an online community founded by Patty Beron (sfGirl), a social media pioneer. While sometimes referred to as a "legendary party crasher" and "queen of San Francisco's dot-com party scene," Beron was a web developer and programmer with a vision to create one of the first noted online communities in the Bay Area. The website was active as an online community from April 1999 until October 2002.
A dot-com party is a social and business networking party hosted by an Internet-related business, typically for promotional purposes or to celebrate a corporate event such as a product launch, venture funding round, or corporate acquisition.
The Economic Council is a major German business and lobby association representing the interests of around 12,000 members and member firms. Members are drawn from all sectors of the German economy including banking and finance, insurance, the automotive and chemical industries, healthcare and high-tech.
Forcepoint is an American multinational corporation software company headquartered in Austin, Texas, that develops computer security software and data protection, cloud access security broker, firewall and cross-domain solutions.
Women's WIRE was the first online space and the first Internet company to target women. It was founded in California first as simply WIRE in 1992, an acronym that stood for Women's Information Resource & Exchange, and could be accessed via telnet for a subscription. Women's WIRE was conceived of by self-taught computer programmer, Nancy Rhine and then co-founded with entrepreneur, Ellen Pack. Later, Women's WIRE migrated to the World Wide Web and became known as Women.com. The site drew millions of visitors a month, with around 300,000 visitors per day. It provided users with email access, community functions such as chatrooms and forums, access to news, advice, and information. In the dot.com bubble of 1999, Women's WIRE began to suffer financial losses and was eventually acquired by iVillage in 2001.