What is a dot-com

Since I've put forward that ClariNet has a claim at being the first of the dot-coms it is worth explaining what that means.

It is, of course, a matter of definition, and I won't pretend that I won't have a bias towards a definition that reflects well on ClariNet, but I nonetheless think the definition I lay out is reasonable.

I think what we have come to know as a "dot-com" is a company that was born for the internet. A company that was created to use the net as its business platform. In the purest form it does everything over the net -- taking orders and delivering data or services over the net. But of course there are dot-coms which just take orders and ship physical goods.

There were, from early days, companies that started to use the net in their business. They might have taken customer support requests over E-mail, for example. Some might even have taken orders though this was skirting the line of the acceptable use policy in most cases.

And there were companies that had large existing businesses that adapted them to use the net. These are not, I would venture, dot-com companies, but more what became known as clicks and mortar.