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 Dot-bomb
Few other phrases epitomize the heady dot-com era like dot-bomb, simply because so many hyped Internet start-ups went that way. The recipe was simple: First, come up with any idea involving the Web (sell aluminum siding over the Internet!); then, raise millions from overeager venture capitalists, run spectacular marketing campaigns and hire hordes of enthusiastic twenty-somethings who are willing to work long hours in exchange for inflated stock options, free drinks, and an office foosball table. Mix it all together, for a couple years at most, and you're left with an essentially hollow concoction that dramatically implodes like a collapsed soufflé. Voilà, your dot-bomb is served.
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| New economy |
As the U.S. economy took off in the late 1990s, it was said we were witnessing the transition of a manufacturing-based economy to one centered on the exchange of ideas and information. Some believed the tech boom would create permanent steady growth, low unemployment, and immunity to boom-and-bust cycles--thus, a new economy. Yet something was lost in all this theory making, as some decidedly old-economy concepts were forgotten. A company still had to be competitive and earn money, it still had to attract--and retain--customers, and it still had to justify its stock price. In short, new was not improved.
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| Mindshare |
Mindshare represented a company's ability to retain a piece of the public's consciousness. So in other words, if Pets.com had mindshare, a person shopping for dog food would think of the company before any other source. The only way to beat your competitors for mindshare was to blow more cash on outrageous advertising efforts than they did, which proved to be a losing proposition in the long run.
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| Paradigm shift |
Though it was coined as early as 1962 by a scientist, paradigm shift, an essential shift from one way of thinking to another, entered the business world during the tech boom because many retail-based dot-coms depended on customers to make one. It's not that a site such as Amazon.com was selling anything new; it's just that it did it in a different way. The paradigm shift required shoppers to go online rather than to a traditional store. While a lot of customers went along with the concept, many dot-coms never made the paradigm shift from focusing on spending money to actually making it.
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| Bandwidth |
Easily one of the most annoying buzzwords, bandwidth is a great example of corrupting a perfectly acceptable word by giving it a new definition so that anyone using it sounds cooler than they really are. Traditionally, bandwidth referred to the amount of data that a transmission line could carry, but it also came to mean the amount of time, capability, and resources that a group or individual has available. "Hey, John, do you have the bandwidth to work on the site today?" may sound OK to some, but why they can't just stick with "Hey, John, can you get this done today?" is beyond us.
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| Eyeballs |
Eyeballs refers to the amount of traffic to a Web site. Since any site depends on traffic, the more eyeballs it has the better. But like with bandwidth, it's not the concept that matters here, it's the word itself. Why not just say traffic when you mean traffic?
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| Offline |
We admit that this one is still heard around the CNET offices. It describes not the world outside of the Internet, but rather a private setting outside of a meeting. Anything that doesn't need the full group's input can be discussed offline between the interested persons. In reality, both situations are offline, but who are we to get technical?
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| Brick-and-mortar |
As the dot-coms grew in number, they needed a way to refer to their counterparts that operated out of traditional stores. Thus, brick-and-mortar was coined to describe merchants who operated outside of the online world. Why a mouthful like brick-and-mortar was chosen is a little puzzling, as we're pretty sure we've seen some stores out there in buildings that are made of metal or wood.
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| Y2K |
Along with Tom Cruise's couch jumping on Oprah, Y2K was one of the great scares of the last couple of decades. Also called the Y2K bug, it referred to the flaw in computer programs that would cause some programs to malfunction on January 1, 2000. As a result, companies and governments spent millions upgrading equipment, and speculation was rampant that chaos would ensue. When the dreaded day finally came around, some mishaps did occur, but civilization did not break down. In fact, the worst incident was probably the disastrous made-for-TV Y2K movie from 1999.
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| Sync-up |
We're not talking about PDAs and computers here, but the general concept is the same. Instead of two gadgets sharing information, sync-up referred to the sharing of information between two (or more) people, as in, "We should sync up to discuss the project." When used as a noun, it could also be construed to suggest a meeting.
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Drop, charge, and lose the cords
