eFront was an

affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which Affiliate (commerce), affiliates receive a wiktionary:commission, commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to Outsourcing, ...

network which purchased successful websites, such as ''

Penny Arcade ''Penny Arcade'' is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website ''loonygames.com''. Since then, Holkins and Krahulik have establish ...

,'' SquareGamer, and BetaNews, and pooled traffic to those sites to command higher prices for advertising during an industrywide ad revenue slowdown. In 2001, there was a scandal when

ICQ ICQ was a cross-platform instant messaging (IM) and VoIP client founded in June 1996 by Yair Goldfinger, Sefi Vigiser, Amnon Amir, Arik Vardi, and Arik's father, Yossi Vardi. The name ICQ derives from the English phrase "I Seek You". Originally ...

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

logs between the CEO Sam P. Jain and other employees were leaked onto the internet through Fuckedcompany.com. The logs detailed activities such as not paying websites that had hosted their

banner ads A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to ...

, sending legal threats to websites that spoke poorly of eFront, and threatening to "rape her and spit on her" (referring to a female webmaster angry about not receiving her check from the company). The logs also detailed how eFront attempted to hire, though never ended up paying,

Something Awful ''Something Awful'' (SA) is an American comedy website hosting content including blog entries, Internet forum, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard Kyanka, Richard "Lowtax" K ...

founder and webmaster Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, ostensibly to have him generate a positive buzz for the company. Richard Kyanka stated during a presentation at the University of Illinois in October 2005 that he was still owed $40,000 by eFront, and that the company ran a number of competitions to attract clients, yet the prizes were awarded to employees. As of July 2006, the company's former efront.com domain is owned by an unrelated French software firm, eFront Alternative Investment Solutions.

References

External links

eFront website
from the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

* - Sam Jain detailing his activity
Betanews escapes eFront meltdown
from ''

The Register ''The Register'' (often also called El Reg) is a British Technology journalism, technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee (journalist), Mike Magee and John Lettice. The online newspaper's Nameplate_(publishing), masthead Logo, s ...

''
eFront Fiasco Was an Affront to Advertisers' Trust
{{DEFAULTSORT:Efront Online advertising services and affiliate networks Companies disestablished in 2001 Defunct marketing companies of the United States