5 years ago... PointCast backs out of float

NEWS 16.07.03 PointCast is trying to halt plans to float on the stock exchange. The company has decided instead to look for a strategic partner for its flagging push technology. President and CEO David Dorman said that the Initial Public Offering would put legal restraints on discussions with potential partners. He asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission this week to withdraw the filing. 16.07.03 Push was going to be huge - and PointCast was going to be almost as huge riding on its coat-tails. At least that was the idea five years ago. The notion that going to websites to get information was just, well, too much effort for most of us really caught on in the mid-to-late 1990s. PointCast and a few others had the idea that 'pushing' information to web users was a big opportunity. Only it didn't quite turn out that way. From a high of almost IPOing, to being courted by Murdoch's News Corp, to (allegedly) bringing down a campus network at HP in California, it was eventually a slippery down hill ride for PointCast. The story of CEO Dave Dorman was almost as interesting. Such was the promise that here we had an exec who had moved from being CEO at Pacific Bell. Post-PointCast he stayed in the headlines with a short time as CEO of Concert - the international alliance between AT&T and BT - and now he is chairman and CEO of AT&T itself, as of almost exactly a year ago. So the opportunity felt big but push never took off, at least not as a PC medium. For millions of mobile phone users, pushed text messages are a part of everyday life.