Dot-combustion: Net stocks down, chat room fury up; Investors show superhighway road rage.(Brief Article)

Crain's New York Business, August, 2000 by vargas, alexia

Once DoubleClick Inc. was the shining star of the new media industry in New York. Its founder, Kevin O'Connor, was the city's first Internet billionaire and investors in its stock, which went public in February 1998 at $17, thought they would get rich along with him. But April's tech stocks crash has changed all of that.

DoubleClick's stock has fallen from a 52-week high of $135.25 to $40.63 last Thursday, adjusted for a two-for-one stock split in January. That made Mr. O'Connor worth around $401 million. And investors are taking out their fury in on-line message boards. ``Hope you guys bought on margin. You deserve to lose and you will,'' wrote a member identified as ``thismachinekillzfascists'' on Yahoo! Finance's DoubleClick board. ``There is zero hope...

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