Disagree - the catalog business model was a proven quantity going back a century or more, e.g. Sears. Amazon was the first mover and was focused on building foo

Disagree - the catalog business model was a proven quantity going back a century or more, e.g. Sears. Amazon was the first mover and was focused on building footprint pretty much from the beginning. Despite this critical article, a more accurate survey of that era's business press would give the impression that Amazon.com was the "good one" compared to the Outpost.com like pump-n-dumps that were often nothing more than a few webservers. Maybe Amazon didn't get serious until the lean times, but the press hype was generally correct. On the other hand, the Groupon business model has always been borderline. (I remember my parents buying these coupon books with deals like half-off steak dinner on Tuesdays before 8PM. How many of those companies are still around?) Furthermore, its been tried before on the Internet, although never at this scale. Nobody's quite said it, but it really does seem like the underlying idea is "Facebook has created The New Economy! What possibly could go wrong?"