Is God.com Dead?
Investors lost faith in iBelieve.com, Lightsource.com was extinguished, and Crosswalk is being run over. What happened to the for-profit Christian Web site boom?
Mark A. Kellner | posted 2/19/2001 12:00AM
Choosing an image to convey the sudden crash and fall of scores of dot-com companies, Inter@ctiveWeek, an Internet-economy trade magazine, resorted to a photo from the 1950s: Charlton Heston as Moses, from Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments. A wild-eyed Heston lofts above his head the two tablets containing the commandments—and anyone remotely familiar with the story could tell what happens next.
The headline accompanying the photo said it all to the Internet industry readership: old rules rule. The failure of dozens of cash-laden companies to reap vast sales through snappy Web sites and Super Bowl ads brought many of these high flyers fast down to Earth, with their firms and investors in shambles. The old rules of having a solid business plan and making a profit before launching out into the stock market were back with a vengeance.
Dot-coms aimed at the Christian market haven't fared much better. Heavily promoted iBelieve.com lasted less than nine months before a sudden rapture to the land of deceased startups. Another, iChristian.com, made it from November 1999 to July 2000 before being swallowed up by Massachusetts-based Christian Book Distributors, a "brick-and-mortar" mail-order bookseller that also has a successful Web site (christianbook.com). And in December, Nashville-based Gaylord Entertainment pulled the plug on Christian Web sites Musicforce.com (a cd store) and Lightsource.com (which partnered with portal site Yahoo! to provide Christian audio programs).
Many that aren't already dead are on life support. Crosswalk.com's stock plummeted during 2000 and, despite high-profile deals such as an exclusive arrangement to cybercast Billy Graham's Amsterdam 2000 conference, is losing ministry partners such as Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. Colson's organization, the Salvation Army, Moody Bible Institute, and others are eyeing startup Christianity.com, which itself went through a round of layoffs and a direction change within a few weeks of launching.
The Internet has proven to be a tough harbor in which to pilot a nascent business, whether Christian or secular. Oddly enough, it wasn't supposed to be that way. The Internet, pundits argued, was going to change the way we all did business, and make it faster and easier to build companies. "Internet time" became a catch phrase, referring to the hurry-up, supercharged atmosphere of a world where change could be computed in nanoseconds, where velocity was measured in kilobits-per-second.
Easy come, easy go
For the two years before the fall, however, it seemed that those old rules of business—like the laws of gravity—had been suspended, if not repealed. Time magazine featured Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos as its "Man of the Year," despite the firm's not having made a profit. Ever.
"IPO" became the mantra of 1998 and 1999, as companies theorized that Wall Street dollars were just as good as real revenues. But those who live by the Nasdaq ticker have found they can also die by the ticker.
Consider Steven M. Wike, for 13 months chief operating officer of Christian Internet portal Crosswalk.com. Wike (a onetime employee of Christianity Today International) in 1978 created Media Management, which sold direct-mail advertising to organizations that serve the Christian community. He has built it to $2.2 million in annual revenues from a base in Roanoke, Virginia.
As the Internet began to take off, Media Management created a Web site, goshen.net, which offered information, links, and e-mail bulletins to Christian leaders. The success of that site led Crosswalk to buy Wike's business in June 1999, at the height of Wall Street's love affair with Silicon Valley. A good chunk of the undisclosed purchase price was paid to Wike in Crosswalk shares valued at $9.70 each at the time of sale.
February 19 2001, Vol. 45, No. 3
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