A Look Back At The Internet Stars of 2001

[mandy]

Six years is something like a millennium in internet time. It's even hard to remember what websites we browsed in 2001. So when web analytics firm Compete issued a list of the 50 most popular websites of August 2001 -- comparing their traffic to the top sites in August 2007 -- we were intrigued.

Yes, the list has a lot of dated companies and most have a much smaller market share than they once did. But whether their startups succeed or fail, tech entrepreneurs have a curious habit of resurfacing elsewhere. What happened to the founders of these companies? We decided to track down this Class of 2001 for a little six-year reunion.

Not surprisingly, many on the list of 2001's best and brightest went on to create new startups. Michael Merhej, founder of now-defunct Audiogalaxy (#16), created an online file-sharing service FolderShare and sold it in 2005 to Microsoft, for whom he works today. Classmates.com (#47) founder Randy Conrads, meanwhile, has also started a new company, time-share site RedWeek.com....

full article: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news...rnet_stars