Digital Entertainment Network
» see den.net as it lived, on the wayback machine
~ the eulogy ~
in 1999 i was 15 years old in turkey, dialing into TTNet through a 33.6k modem. the idea of streaming video over my connection was a slideshow at best, five seconds of buffering for one second of footage. DEN was a project that lived in a parallel universe where every american teenager had a cable modem and unlimited time to watch a webshow about skateboarding.
the company was founded in 1998 in los angeles by marc collins-rector and chad shackley. they had cashed out of an ISP called concentric network and put the proceeds into a streaming video startup. by 1999 they had raised about $60 million from corporate investors led by microsoft and NBC. they had hired around 300 staff and were shooting "channels" of short-form web video aimed at narrow demographics that did not yet have their own TV channels. the production values were tv-quality for the era. the bandwidth to actually watch it was not yet a thing most viewers had.
the $75 million IPO was scheduled for october 1999. in september the company canceled it. lawsuits had surfaced accusing collins-rector and other DEN executives of sexually assaulting underage boys at the company's malibu mansion, which had been used as both a residence and a recruiting space. all three named executives resigned within weeks.
~ the dossier ~
| Born | 1998 in Los Angeles |
|---|---|
| Peak | $60M raised and around 300 staff at IPO filing in October 1999 |
| Killed | May 17, 2000 (bridge financing failed) |
| Lifespan | about two years |
| Made by | Marc Collins-Rector and Chad Shackley, using Concentric Network exit money |
| Killed by | scandal, then the dot-com bust |
~ what it was ~
structurally DEN was an early YouTube without the YouTube. it bet that streaming would arrive in 1999 and that audiences would show up for narrative web content if the production was good enough. neither of those bets was correct on its timeline. streaming would not become normal in american homes for another five years. and even when it did, the audience for "tv but on the internet" sat with hulu rather than with a venture-funded LA studio.
~ the funny part ~
brock pierce, the third executive named in the 1999 lawsuit, eventually settled and reinvented himself as a crypto entrepreneur. he co-founded a stablecoin company. he ran for US president in 2020. his connection to DEN periodically resurfaces in coverage of his various ventures and is usually addressed via deflection. marc collins-rector fled to spain and was arrested in europe in 2002. he pleaded guilty to one count and was deported back to the US in 2004. the company itself died on may 17, 2000, when the bridge round failed and they ran out of cash.
~ what it left ~
DEN became source material for documentaries. the 2015 film "an open secret" covers the abuse allegations directly. the streaming-to-teenagers premise eventually worked, with different companies and different ethics. DEN's contribution to that arc is mostly cautionary. spending $60 million to discover that 1999 broadband cannot deliver your video is one lesson. surrounding that spend with a serial-abuse scandal is the other.
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other dot com: Confinity, HomeRuns.com, Bitconnect, MobShop / Accompany
also died in the 2000s: Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, Google Mashup Editor, Grand Royal
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