Who owns theGlobe.com now, and what is left?
theglobe.com, inc. still exists as a Delaware corporation and still files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. There is nothing inside it. Delfin Midstream, a liquefied natural gas developer, has held about 70.9 percent of the stock since a purchase agreement signed on December 20, 2017.
The company reported no employees as of March 23, 2026. Its only officer, Frederick Jones, holds the president, chief executive and chief financial officer titles at once and takes no pay for any of them.
The balance sheet is the real answer. On June 30, 2026 the company held $15,115 in cash, its only asset, and it had lost $123,504 over the first six months of that year. Its own filing puts the risk in one line: "We prefer to avoid filing for protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code."
The stock still changes hands over the counter as TGLO, with 441,480,473 shares outstanding as of August 5, 2026. It has not traded on Nasdaq since April 2001.
How did two Cornell students build a 1995 social network?
theglobe.com, inc. was incorporated on May 1, 1995 and started operating the same day, according to its own filings. Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman, both undergraduates at Cornell University, built it so that anyone with a browser could claim a homepage, join a themed club and talk to strangers.
The product went head to head with GeoCities, which Yahoo bought in 1999. theGlobe.com gave members free pages through a tool called uPublish, topic rooms called globeClubs, chat and message boards, plus small business hosting and a games network.
At the scale of the time, it worked. The company's Form 10-K for 1999 reported 3.6 million registered members in the United States and abroad, 4.7 million unique visitors in December 1999 and a 7.2 percent reach of the internet as measured by Media Metrix. About 220 people worked there at the end of that year.
Advertising paid for all of it. Banner and sponsorship sales produced roughly $15.0 million of the $18.6 million the company booked in 1999, about 80 percent of revenue.
Why did a $9 stock close at $63.50 on day one?
Bear Stearns priced the offering at $9 a share on November 13, 1998, after the deal had slipped twice in October. The company sold 3.1 million shares, a thin slice of its stock, into a market that had decided internet shares were scarce.
The first trade printed far above the offer. CBS News reported an opening price of $67 that day, while later accounts put the first print at $87. The rest is not in dispute. The stock touched $97 and closed at $63.50.
That close sat about 606 percent above the offer price, the largest first-day gain an American IPO had ever produced. CBS News rounded it to 605 percent in its story that evening. Nothing has beaten it in the 28 years since.
The business underneath was thin. theGlobe.com had booked $1.2 million of revenue against $5.8 million of losses in the first half of 1998. Tom Taulli of Silicon Investor told CBS News that day, "We're kind of in a mania here. It doesn't make sense."
What did the vinyl pants clip cost theGlobe.com?
In 1999 a CNN crew followed Paternot to a Manhattan nightclub and filmed him dancing on a table in shiny vinyl pants. On camera he said, "Got the girl. Got the money. Now I'm ready to live a disgusting, frivolous life."
The clip traveled the way things traveled before social media. It ran on television, it got quoted in print, and it followed Paternot for decades under a nickname he never shook, the CEO in the plastic pants.
The segment did not cause the collapse, and treating it as the cause is the lazy version of the story. What it did was put a face on a suspicion investors were already forming in 1999, that the people running these companies had no clear idea what the money was for.
Paternot later wrote a memoir about the run, A Very Public Offering, and was still arguing with the caricature years afterward. "No longer were we the only idiots in town," he wrote of the wave of internet offerings that followed his, in a line Salon quoted in 2001.
Why did 3.6 million members not pay the bills?
Community sites in 1999 sold banner ads, and banner ads were about to get very cheap. theGlobe.com's revenue grew from $5.5 million in 1998 to $18.6 million in 1999. Its net loss grew faster, from $16.0 million to $49.6 million, which works out to about $2.67 of loss for every dollar of revenue.
There was no second revenue line worth the name, and no protection from anyone who wanted to copy the idea. The 1999 annual report said so in its own risk language, warning that "Barriers to entry are relatively insubstantial" in the business the company had chosen.
When online ad rates fell apart in 2000 and 2001, nothing was left to fall back on. Paternot and Krizelman were pushed out in 2000, Nasdaq delisted the stock in April 2001, and the community site itself was switched off that August.
The arithmetic was not unique to theGlobe.com. Pets.com and Webvan died of the same thing, spending heavily to buy customers who were never going to be worth what they cost.
Where are Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman now?
Todd Krizelman moved to the German media group Bertelsmann after theGlobe.com and worked with its publishing businesses. In 2007 he co-founded MediaRadar, an advertising intelligence company he still runs as chief executive. He told TheWrap in 2024 that he "went in with my eyes open" the second time around.
Stephan Paternot was worth roughly $97 million on paper at the close of the first trading day, by Salon's 2001 account. He borrowed against that stake, put money into the delivery startup UrbanFetch and lost about a million dollars of his own when it folded. He has spent the years since in film and technology ventures.
The corporation they started outlived both of their roles in it, on paper only. It sold its last operating business, the .travel registry manager Tralliance, on September 29, 2008, and has had no operations since.
What is left is a ticker, a Delaware charter and a set of quarterly filings paid for by a natural gas company. That is the entire estate of the biggest first-day IPO in American history.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is theGlobe.com still in business in 2026?
No. theglobe.com, inc. is a shell company with no employees and no operating business, and it has been one since it sold the Tralliance registry business on September 29, 2008. Its June 30, 2026 filing reported $15,115 in cash and warned that it may not continue as a going concern beyond the next twelve months.
Was theGlobe.com's IPO really the biggest first-day pop ever?
Yes, and it still is. theGlobe.com priced at $9 a share on November 13, 1998 and closed its first session at $63.50, a gain of about 606 percent. No American IPO has posted a larger first-day rise in the years since.
Why did theGlobe.com shut down?
theGlobe.com sold banner advertising to fund a free community site, and it lost $49.6 million on $18.6 million of revenue in 1999 alone. When online ad rates collapsed, Nasdaq delisted the stock in April 2001 and the community site was turned off that August.