Back in April 1997, when iFusion.com filed for bankruptcy, it made history by becoming the first Silicon Alley company to seek protection from creditors under federal law.

This year, as the shakeout in the Internet industry picked up steam and the funding marketplace all but dried up, there were several New York companies making the trek into bankruptcy court, seeking the court's protection from annoyed creditors.

Leading the list was Pseudo.com, the once high-flying interactive TV play which ended a six-year run on September 18, sent all 170 employees were home and filed for Chapter 11 with debts totaling $4 million.

Urban Box Office Network (UBO.net) also shuttered operations, laid off some 300 staffers and entered into bankruptcy protection with some $14 million in debt.

As bankruptcy court became more of a feeding ground for bargain hunters, the following companies with major ties to New York also filed for bankruptcy: APB Online, BabyGear.com, iParty.com, Gazoontite.com, ToySmart.com, Unidigital and Unapix Online.

Lost in the Meltdown: Dot-Com Jobs

= April's stock-busting sell-off, followed by a pullback in private equity markets, made sure that lots of Alley companies withered. Some went fundless and closed up shop, others filed for bankruptcy, still others were snapped up for pennies, or sank to ignominy.

But precious few avoided one of the most recurring stories of the year: layoffs.

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Among the companies that announced major cuts in its ranks were UrbanFetch.com (well over a hundred), and hundreds more from DrDrew.com, DoubleClick, Razorfish, 24/7 Media, Agency.com, Govworks, TheStreet.com, Snickelways. It went on and on.

Then there were layoffs followed by closings: Web streaming media play Pseudo, e-commerce StickyNetworks, OneBigTable.com, HalfThePlanet.com, for example.

Miadora, AngryMan, APBNews, HalfthePlanet, OpenTable, and UrbanBoxOffice (UBO) also cashed in their chips and folded. AKA.com and BeautyJungle were also among the long list of shuttered companies, including Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), which was first backed by Chase Capital Partners, Enron and Intel. DEN put off its IPO and abandoned by its principals could not find additional funding.

Then there's Boo.com. Any Alley pundit could rehash the company's history, but here's the skinny. After burning through $135 million in funding, the UK-based Boo.com closed its doors and declared bankruptcy. On March 30, Bright Station purchased the company's back-end technology for a meager $375,000, and three months later Fashionmall.com snapped up the site for an undisclosed amount. The ecommerce site relaunched its acquisition as, guess what, Boo.com.

The string of companies that ended up in the fish fry faced unique challenges, but had one thing in common: an inability to convince investors that theirs was a plausible business model to fund to profitability. Two sectors, e-commerce and content, gave up the dot-com ghost more than others, including wireless.

On the content side, James Cramer's TheStreet.com buckled under shareholder pressure and began moving away from its subscription fee to a free model. Another struggling content play, Oxygen.com, received $100 million from Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures in early December, surprising the cash-starved Alley with its news. But its layoff of 65 workers was, sadly, no surprise.

In a related note, today marks Cramer's last day at Cramer, Berkowitz & Co., his hedge fund. The trader's decision to become a full-time consultant with TheStreet.com belies the hedge fund manager's serious commitment to the financial news site, and is indicative of the plucky attitude of most content plays still in the running.

And on the e-commerce side, another women's site, iVillage, revamped its model and abandoned its plan to sell baby products across its platform. Instead it sold its retail unit ibaby.com to BabyGear.com, which has since filed for Chapter 7.

Many e-commerce companies would learn that commerce over the Internet demands experienced retailers educated in customer service, returns and delivery challenges.

For their part, content providers now struggle with the challenge of retaining customers who have been conditioned to read material for free, with subscription-based content.

Who will survive the coming days? That's a big question. But a safe bet would be Internet infrastructure services, ASPs and wireless providers.

Who Felt the Brunt of the Content Crunch?

In the last year a wonderful thing happened. Two provocative sites, Feedmag.com and Suck.com, merged and became Automatic Media. The underlying reason for the play was the realization that content was no longer king on the Internet.

With layoffs at Salon.com and APBNews.com filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, investors are leery if not turned-off completely by the notion of handing cash to sites like Suck.com. Automatic Media was able to raise $4 million from Lycos Ventures, the venture capital arm of Lycos; Advance Publications, which owns Conde Nast; and Paladin, a British venture capital group.

In June, APBnews.com let all of its 140 employees go. The decision came on the heels of the company's inability to find a third round of private funding. As a pure play content provider, the company was simply too big a risk

Investors may have wished to continue funding APBnews, but sources familiar with the situation said the financing decision would have been easier to swallow had the company, like other content providers, been a media as well as content play.

In August, TheStreet pulled its analysts-ranking division, a highly touted section of the site. "After reviewing the business upside of the project, the amount of resources required to succeed does not justify the continuance of this effort," said Tom Clarke, CEO of TheStreet, in an internal email.

The publicly traded company has been under scrutiny by investors who demand quick returns. Clarke also said "TheStreet.com is focused more than ever on driving to profitability. This is the single mission for this firm as we battle to win in our space and defy those who think we will not make it."

<$3.6 Billion in VC Money Invested in 2000

Despite the downturn that characterized the private equity market in 2000, venture capital dollars continued to flow into the region with approximately $3.6 billion invested in the New York/Metro area during the first three quarters this year.

This stacks up almost identical to the approximately $4 billion spent during all of 1999.

A perusal of the Pricewaterhouse Coopers' MoneyTree survey of VC deals showed that more than $1 billion was pumped into New York-based Internet companies in each of the first three quarters of 2000.

In the first quarter, $1.4 billion was invested in the Metro area with the software and telecommunications and business services sectors leading the way. The second and third, when a combined $2.2 billion was injected into the Alley, those sectors also saw huge investments.

Interestingly, venture capitalists seemed to be avoiding content and e-commerce plays in 2000, pouring money instead into infrastructure deals and ASP-related startups.

For content-centric Silicon Alley, it was a dramatic shift in funding strategy. In the third quarter alone, access and infrastructure investments in New York-based Web playes totaled $104.5 million (nine deals), up significantly from the $19.3 million invested in the second quarter (three deals), according to the most recent PricewaterhouseCoopers' survey.

The slowdown in fund raisings, as well as financing for start-ups is likely to be reflected in annual venture spending surveys from the coming year. Many venture plays were already committing capital when the markets started heading downward and economic indicators pointed to slowing growth in the overall economy.