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From: Admiral Fogg-Bottom
Date: 26 Jul 2001
Time: 13:13:19
Remote Name: 64.13.113.226
Dear SF Examiner,
I was shocked and appalled to read your story on Thursday, "Dot-com Duh," that listed the 10 dumbest ideas for dot-com businesses.
Much to my chagrin, my own dot-com, FogWatch.com, was nowhere to be found on the list. I believe that a dot-com whose business plan is based entirely on B2C fog-related content should at least rate a dishonorable mention on any list of bad dot-com ideas.
In the case of FogWatch.com, the appeal of our site is limited to residents and visitors to San Francisco, an extremely small potential audience. In addition, fog is not a marketable commodity in any sense of the word -- there is only one company, London Fog, devoted to fog-related products, and we have not successfully convinced them to advertise on our site. In fact, we have not successfully convinced anyone to advertise on our site, another indication of the shakiness of our concept.
In addition:
* Our singular attraction, the FogCam, is plagued by technical glitches, including inexplicable orange stripes that the FogWatch crew has been unable to fix, despite their best efforts;
* Our "news stories" are poorly written and edited, and in a few cases appear to be made up from whole cloth;
* The site design is clearly derived from a template of Microsoft FrontPage, the barefoot red-headed stepchild of Web design applications.
In short, I urge you to reconsider, and consider FogWatch.com in future articles on dot-com ideas gone wrong.
Your Admiral,
Rear Admiral Phineas Fogg-Bottom
P.S. FogWatch readers can view the aforementioned story at http://www.examiner.com/news/default.jsp?story=n.dotcom.0726w. If you agree with the Admiral, send your comments to letters@sfexaminer.com.