"In the mid to late nineties, Hotmail was a virtual Switzerland for spammers, who operated with impunity across the free e-mail service."
Excuse me??

And read this: http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/09/15/i-made-the-25-worst-web-sites-list/
"My chest rentals have generated over $5,000 in revenue so far – which is likely a little more than you’ve made from your own torso. ;)"

Lists like these are always ridiculous. There are obviously worse websites than those! I think there's also some confusion about whether they're talking about "websites" or "web-based services". For example, their criticisms of Hotmail are really about the service offering and not the website as such (and the same goes for MySpace).

Anyway, I'm just grateful that my website isn't on that list! :-)

I'll voluntarily add my Worst Web Form in the World to the list:
http://blogoscoped.com/worst/

Google's sites = 0
MSFT's sites = 2
Some of those sites are just plain weird.
and whats so bad about the Hampster Dance? It was the Radio 2 Website of the day a few years back.

I'm glad to see myspace topping the list.
I'm not an "old fart", as the guys who made the list themselves claim to be (well.... at 26, I guess i am probably about 12 years older than the target population). I created a myspace account last year and tried to look around, but it's is just a horribly non-functional site. I "get it" that the allure is the social aspect, but the site just simply doesn't work. The navigation is horrible and inconsistent, the overall visual design is ugly and again, inconsistent, and basically nothing works like I would expect it to.

It really goes to show that the general public really doesn't care at all about "standards", "web 2.0", or any of the buzzwords people like us like to preach about, or even "basic functionality", as far as I'm concerned. Spending a few hours on myspace has made me realize that most people really don't think about how to improve things (objects, products, webpages, etc) – they just take them at face value and assume this is how things are "supposed to work". I ask my younger brother-in-law about myspace, and he can't tell me anything that's wrong with it. Apparently he thinks it's OK to have two "home" links on every page, each going to a different place.

not to be melodramatic, but the fact that a site like myspace can get so popular so quickly with apparently no concern from the general populous about the horrid functionality really makes me question why we even try to make "the web better".
The same is true for webmail services. All us geeks use Gmail because it's fast, sleek and it just works. I've tried to show other non-technical people why I like Gmail, and they really just don't see the difference or why it's better than Yahoo or Hotmail. For them, what they have is just good enough, and they really have no concept of how to make things better. It's fine with them if it takes 10 seconds to load each new page to read a message. They don't care if their inbox fills with spam, because that's the way it's always been. Conversation View? Who cares – I've always had to look back through my inbox for past messages, why should I change that now?
bah, that's enough from me for now.......

I agree mostly with that list. I've seen worse, but that was generally a good outline of the worst sites.

Golden Palace Casin0, hehe. Someone I know just sold "Britney Spears' egg salad sandwich" to them for $520.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Britney-Spears-egg-salad-sandwich-K-Fed-corndog-sealed_W0QQitemZ110025420159QQcmdZViewItem

The point about MS is sad but true. Resting on their laurels too soon has created a vacum for Firefox, Gmail, and internet-based applications like Writely to phase out Word and other Office applications.

[Signature removed – Tony]

My interest in 'worse websites' is education.

I've not looked at 'the' list but will after this comment. However, the myspace comments grabbed my attention because my 17 year daughter plays with her friends there, and I'm naturally interested in her choice of social environments – but including her reality space too. I've not tried myspace personally but by sharing some of my daughters excursions there, and even suggesting appropriate replys to some of the questions that her spacefriends ask, I have to say that in my opinion there are more positive aspects to this virtual world than other commentators seem to appreciate. Perhaps this is because players in myspace type e-vironments involve their reality friends too – this is certainly true in my daughters case. Does this balance make a positive difference – I think it it does? Myspace critics on functionality, or dis-funcationality (depending on ones personal preferences) are obviously not on the same wavelength as the 100 million plus subscribers to the site. My daughter certainly navigates myspace at the speed of thought, despite the content that she personally considers as wastespace. One mans waste is another mans space – that's what I think. I could go on but to in summary, I think myspace is closer to reality than one might initially think – how boring, unstimulating and and utterly unrealistic to expect any environment to work like a swiss watch – people that crave for such a world are robots. Now there's a twist.

Creating a web business is as challenging as pursuing a conventional business – the fundamental principles regarding organisational, risk-reward, management, etc, are exactly the same; apart from the fact that significantly more e-businesses fail than their conventional counterparts.
This statistic clearly illustrates the massive potential that e-commerce will provide for decades to come – how exciting is that.

Having lived in the real world for 55 years, am I an ond fart?