A site has deathpool contest for UGO !

[sleeperservice]

http://www.themushroom.com/humor/ugodeadpool.html

Mayby these people are just jealus or something.

But there say they give a free game to the winner.


OK the real question is .

What will happen to Apolyton if UGO goes bust ?

[sleeperservice]

UGO Deadpool Heats Up
By Kevin Weiser
<font color=blue size=1>Since Mark said it loads fine for them i deleted most of it.</font>

So, what do you think? We're running a small contest: The person who comes closest to naming the date when UGO goes belly up gets a free game.

Here are the dates we have so far:

April 10th from Hot Soup

April 27th from Ryan Newman of EntDepot

May 25th from Kevin Weiser

August 15th from Jeff Coleman of GamesMania.

Send us your guess!
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http://www.themushroom.com/humor/ugodeadpool.html
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by sleeperservice (edited March 06, 2001).]</font>

[sleeperservice]

I have included the full text not because I dont respect their copyrihgt but because the link does not work any more.(i think)
Fortunately I had a copy (open browser window)
If its a joke its a bad one .

[MarkG]

it loaded fine for me...


yeah, it's a bad joke cause they forget that along with ugo going down lots of people will be unemployed...

[CapTVK]

Yeah, a killing joke

Lum the Mad seems to have the scoop about UGO

For more news check www.lumthemad.net

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1>
</font>
Running pop-up ads today was probably the worst thing UGO could have done... today the silence was broken.

You've seen the stories bluesnews.com and shacknews.com posted today about their lack of payment. I've been following this up today, and got a major UGO affiliate to talk to me on the condition of remaining anonymous.

Here's what (s)he had to say.

Last November, UGO negotiated for more venture capital. They had announced that they had recieved $10 million. This was true. The problem was, they had asked for - and needed - $23 million to stay afloat. The remainder was contingent on stopping UGO's burn-through NOW - and a large part of that was UGO's affiliate program - the ad banners. You might remember that that is when UGO cut affiliate payments from an average of $2.00 CPM (or per thousand page views) to 50 cents CPM. Others were simply told that they would get a percentage of what ad inventory UGO was able to sell. Which has been, for quite some time now, zero.

The first payment under those new contracts was in November of last year. Since then, no affiliate has been paid anything. Well, that's not entirely true - several have actually threatened to sue UGO, but quickly recieved out-of-court settlements. But no contract commitment made has been kept by UGO to its affiliates. NONE.

UGO then recieved another $10 million dollars of the initial $23 million requested - which was contingent upon the layoff of a good portion of UGO's workforce. This happened Friday. (The remaining $3 million is scheduled to be paid out later this year.) UGO promptly issued press releases announcing the $10 million payout as if it were newly negotiated capital, in order to offset the public perception of the layoff announcement.

UGO's affiliate managers (those that are left - the layoffs cut particularly deep there) would love to pay their affiliates. They can't. They have been forbidden to pay anyone - since if they paid one, they would have to pay them all. And they are left watching their content disappear and their debts soar.

Is UGO making any income at all outside of their venture capital? Probably not - UGO hasn't sold any ad inventory in approximately forever. They sold gamedealer to Electronics Boutique. Gary Coleman can only do so many celebrity appearances.

What amazes me is that the UGO affiliates have managed to keep silent until today. Pop-up ads can be dangerous, apparently.


<img src="/images/blue1.gif" width=100% height=1></font></td></tr></table></center>

Nostradamus predicts future: Trouble Ahead!
----------------------------------------------
(actual headline from the Civ1 in-game newspaper)

[TCO]

Markos, comments? please?

[MarkG]

we have no direct communication with ugo, and it's a matter of policy of gamestats and apolyton to not openly discuss such matters


if you want an example of what's going on in the indurstry, i can tell you that you wont beeing those mycomputer.com ads that appeared in the second ad space of the forum summary pages, since they closed their pay per click program....

[Sean]

Killing them, or hoping for there death is not good. Strikes me as a rather unhealthy outlook. UGO, are not doing themselves any favours, thats true. But we have to convince them that their current ad policies are damn annoying, and turning people off.


------------------
Give me Liberty, or give me death!

[DanQ]

UGO probably doesn't like the pop-ups anymore than any of us do, but they are doing what they must in order to survive in these lean times for online advertising.

I heard a excellent expression coined for this period that we've entered into in this regard: "Internet Winter". Yes, it confirms that there is a freezing effect spreading throughout the market but, remember, ever winter is followed by a spring, then summer. It's just the cyle of life, re-created on the Internet with its own digital properties.

----------------
Dan; Apolyton CS