Inside the Cult of Kibu: And Other Tales of the Millennial Gold Rush

Scads of disgruntled ex-employees have written thousands of pages on what it was like to work for a fly-by-night dot-com and how quickly it all ended. Despite the barrage of Internet reminiscences, Lori Gottlieb and Jesse Jacobs have penned their own version of life at the now-defunct online community Kibu.com, Inside the Cult of Kibu: And Other Tales of the Millennial Gold Rush. Dividing their book into 10 chapters entitled, ""The Idea,"" ""The Money,"" ""The Culture,"" ""The Parties,"" ""The Lingo,"" ""The Spin,"" ""The Mismanagement,"" ""The IPO,"" ""The Layoffs,"" and ""The Hereafter,"" Gottlieb and Jacobs intersperse their own experiences at Kibu with comments from nearly 100 players in the dot-com game. Kurt Andersen talks about the friction between the ""New Media People"" and the ""Old Media People,"" Andrew Anker tells of Wired's dress code and Josh Keller explains how he handled laying off employees at the software company Ububu. Altogether, it makes for an amusing, if familiar, snapshot of a bygone era.