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last meal for Feed
Parent Automatic Media, out of moola, folds
By Marty Beard
When irreverent web sites Suck.com and Feed merged to become Automatic Media last July, the founders were confident that success would be automatic.
It wasn't.
Automatic Media is out of cash and will shut down.
The company’s four web properties, Feed, Suck, Alt.Culture and Plastic.com, will be put up for sale, according to news reports over the weekend. Automatic Media CEO Lee deBoer could not be reached for comment.
Visitors to Suck on Friday found a cartoon strip headlined, "Gone fishing," as if to indicate, Schwarzenegger-like, that it will be back.
What killed Automatic is what has been leveling a lot of online properties over the past half-year and more: a dearth of online advertisers anxious to reach its shared readership of young and web-savvy visitors.
Suck and Feed are among the oldest ad-supported content sites on the web, having both been launched in 1995.
Suck.com was started by web writer Joey Anuff as a satiric site posting daily original illustrated commentary. Suck is often described as the web’s longest-running daily column. Prior to the formation of Automatic Media, Suck was owned by Lycos.
Feed was founded by Stephanie Syman and Steven Johnson, who would later found Automatic Media.
According to reports, 21 of the company’s 25 employees will be laid off. The editors of Automatic Media’s newest property, Plastic.com, will continue to run the site but will not be paid for their efforts.
The thinking behind Automatic Media was that strength lies in numbers for small, boutique-ish content sites like Suck, Feed and its first acquisition, online contemporary-culture encyclopedia Alt.culture.
Automatic Media formed after April 2000’s Nasdaq crash, just as the dot.com death cycle was gathering speed.
The company was supposed to serve as a bulwark in the storm. If everything had gone as planned, Suck, Feed, Plastic and Alt.culture would have thrived within Automatic Media’s shelter, aggregating ad revenue and pooling their staff and financial resources.
If the company had been able to survive, it could have served as a model for other niche content sites. But weak online ad sales proved to be an obstacle too great for the fledgling content company.
The Automatic Media network was meant to serve as an online gathering place for edgy, educated 21- to 35-year-olds. The demographic was described as affluent, and surveys show that many members of the age bloc get much of their news and entertainment from the web.
No figures on the site’s traffic were available, but as of last summer, Feed, Suck and Alt.culture had about one million regular readers.
Automatic planned to add new Gen X-ish web sites to its lineup. And it did launch one, Plastic.com, in January. Like the rest of Automatic Media, the site was supposed to succeed because of its small size. It had a staff of just four people when it debuted.
"Plastic is the most economical site that you’ll probably ever see," editor in chief Anuff told Media Life when it launched. But reports indicate that the not-insignificant cost of running Plastic led to Automatic Media’s demise.
Plastic licensed technology from tech-discussion site Slashdot. The technology enabled its users to generate all the content by posting links to outside articles and debating current affairs. Plastic, along with Feed, was nominated for a Webby Award.
Automatic Media’s revenue all came from advertising. As one poster on Plastic observed, as of Friday there were no more ads on Automatic Media properties.
Terra Lycos had a 25 percent stake in Automatic Media. Automatic raised and apparently burned through $4 million from Lycos, Advance Publications and U.K. venture capital group Paladin.
June 11, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Marty Beard is a staff writer for Media Life.
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