EFRONT GIVES UP [Author: Lum the Mad]

In probably what is the least surprising development of this year’s net implosion, C-Net reports that eFront gave its long-suffering websites 2 days to find alternate hosting.

“Effective April 5, 2001 at 12 midnight PT, eFront will discontinue the free hosting it offered to the Web sites on its network,” read the alert, signed by eFront Director of Operations Greg Panos. “eFront will continue to operate as an advertising network. This gives all of the Web sites a two-day period to find another solution to host their Web sites.”

C-Net goes on to say that, in what has become an all-too-typical screw your affiliates business model, some sites were actually locked out of their sites before they had a chance to get their content off. The article doesn’t mention that eFront’s pretending to continue to be an advertising network is basically a joke, since it hasn’t actually paid any money to its supposed employees in some time, much less its affiliates. And of course, not paying your creditors – as apparently was the case with eFront’s own web server hosting – fails to be amusing after a few months.

Morale at the company–hit hard first by bad times common to all advertising-supported Web companies and then by the dissemination of the ICQ logs–has plunged in the wake of the hosting news.

“The end is when the Internet company loses its ability to be on the Internet,” said the source. “This is kind of the final act.”

eFront’s most popular web site, Something Awful, has announced that it will move to its own servers, with Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka, himself an eFront “employee”, announcing that Something Awful will be moving to asking for donations for his huge hosting costs (Something Awful does as much traffic in one day as we do in one month) or, as a last resort, porn ad banners.

If I don’t get enough money, then you’ll probably be greeted by “HOT NURSES THAT KNOW HOW TO PARTY” every day. To give them fair credit though, they really do know how to party.

Because, as everyone knows, the Internet is just one big party. The hemlock table’s over to the right.