Automatic Media was a web content site in 2000 to 2001.

Foundation

Automatic Media was created in July 2000 as a joint venture between

Suck Suck may refer to: *Suction, the force exerted by a partial vacuum * .sucks, an Internet top-level domain Arts and entertainment Music * Suck (band), a South African hard rock group * Suck, drummer for the 1990s Japanese punk band Teengenerat ...

and Feed, two

online magazine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to an online only magazine was the comput ...

s, after the publications had raised $4 million in

venture capital financing Venture may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music *The Ventures, an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958 *"A Venture", 1971 song by the band Yes *''Venture'', a 2010 EP by AJR Games * ''Venture'' (video game), a 1981 arcade g ...

from

Lycos Lycos, Inc. (stylized as LYCOS), is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company ...

Ventures LP. Automatic Media's first acquisition was

Alt.culture alt.culture was an online encyclopedia of youth culture, especially relating to Generation X, in the 1990s, based on the book ''Alt.Culture: An A-to-Z Guide to the 90's – Underground, Online and Over-the-Counter'' by Nathaniel Wice and Steven D ...

, an online encyclopedia of alternative culture focused primarily on internet fads. Automatic Media allowed its member sites to use a shared advertising sales force, technologies, and administrative resources. The sites maintained distinctive brand names and editorial voices, but engaged in heavy cross-linking and advertising for their partner sites. In January 2001, Automatic Media announced its first original venture, Plastic.com. Plastic sought to minimize operational costs by running entirely on user-contributed stories. Its staff initially consisted of four people.

Demise

Less than a year after its foundation, Automatic Media's subsidiaries declared

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the deb ...

, citing "an inability to secure additional financing". Feed and Suck both announced that they were firing their staffs, and would no longer produce content. It was also announced that Plastic would continue with a skeleton staff working

pro bono ( English: 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. The term traditionally referred to provision of legal services by legal professionals for people who a ...

, although its fate was uncertain until bought by one of suck's original founders

Carl Steadman Carl Steadman is co-founder of Suck.com, creator of several pieces of early web-savvy literature and former operator of Plastic.com. He was also production director for HotWired, and appeared in the 1999 documentary Home Page. Works Placing- "P ...

Impact

Automatic Media's echoed the failure of many other web content sites. The failure of these sites disproved the common notion that the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

would make it easy for independent media sites to publish and distribute content for cheap compared with the cost of putting out print magazines. Combined with the questions raised by other dot-com collapses, investors were now questioning whether advertising alone could sustain the enormous and often underestimated costs of producing and hosting original material.

References

{{reflist , 2

External links

A MetaFilter Thread
on the rumors of Automatic's closure

on the end of Suck and Feed

by

Scott Rosenberg Scott Rosenberg (born April 24, 1963) is an American screenwriter, film producer, and actor. Life and career Rosenberg was born in Needham, Massachusetts, to a Jewish family. After high school graduation in 1981, he attended Boston Universit ...

audio version

on the history of Automatic Media Defunct websites Online publishing companies of the United States Defunct online companies of the United States Internet properties established in 2000 Internet properties disestablished in 2001