Stealth mode, in reverse
Less than three months after the start of its public beta, the Fold.com site has been “deactivated” and the domain put up for sale. Michael Arrington quips:
Well, the inevitable is starting to happen - a few new web startups are starting to close up shop as they find that building an application is a lot easier than getting users to try it out, and keep coming back. Fold.com, an Ajax home page, has folded…In anticipation of the inevitable thinning of new web startups, I’ve added the tag “DEADPOOL” to our Company & Product Index.
Fold.com’s blog announced the close of operations tersely: “I'm currently busy working on other stuff so Fold is deactivated for the time being.”
The Fold.com domain sale notice, however, discusses “lots of interesting possibilities”:
High quality 4-letter dictionary domain. Suitable for community (MySpace, FaceBook) or news sites. Lots of interesting possibilities via subdomains like center.fold.com or un.fold.com.
Several thousand backlinks from Digg (recent frontpage listing with 1,500 diggs), TechCrunch, IDG, ZDnet, Slashdot, Wikipedia, MicroPersuasion and other highly active top websites and blogs. The subdomain beta.fold.com has PR 6.
I'm presently considering offers in the same range as recent sales of four-letter dictionary domains (jail.com, base.com, blue.com) Please see http://dnjournal.com/ytd-sales-charts.htm before you bid to get an idea of what kind of money we are talking. Any reasonable offer will be considered but please to not waste my time with USD 100 offers.
Is Fold.com an isolated story, or will more recent start-ups fold soon as well? Join the conversation: “Talk Back” below to share your thoughts.