Tiscali Sinking
March 12, 2009
Most of my pals in Harrods Creek don’t know about Tiscali. The company rolled up a number of European Internet Service Providers and, for a time, offered a wide range of interesting services. The Wikipedia write up is here. For example, the UK version once had a nifty run down of European shareware and freeware. The selection was moderated by some people who knew what was interesting and what was a loser. Alas, the service was discontinued. Tiscali slipped off my radar until I heard about its financial troubles. The gloom is official. Reuters’ ran “Italy’s Tiscali Suspends Long-Term Debt Payments” making the gloom sufficiently deep to suggest that the company may go away at some point. I wish the old Tiscali was back, however. The fact I noticed, if it is indeed accurate, was this one:
Tiscali has long-term debt of 500 million euros, it said last Friday, with the next interest payments due on March 11 and 13 for a total of 11 million euros.
If you have any bright ideas, send them to Tiscali. The Italian outfit struck me as innovative and open not too long ago if you use human years. In Internet years, maybe the glory days were early 19th century. Pundits pushing for user fees might want to dig into the various monetization efforts the Italian company explored over the last decade. Instructive was that exercise for me.
Stephen Arnold, March 11, 2009
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
