Since the Panic of '08 started nailing Silicon Valley startups, people have been begging Philip Kaplan to restart his FuckedCompany website. But Kaplan doesn't want a second dose of dotcom doom.

In the self-involved world of Silicon Valley, finding a suitable mate outside the industry is inconceivable. Dating at work is par for the course. So congratulations are due to Philip Kaplan and his new fiancée for defying local convention.

Yet another contender in the FuckedCompany 2.0 sweepstakes, Screwdd — launched in February, I think, but suddently more bookmarkable — is a site about layoffs that's more built out than the newer FuckedStartups. At least the ads are. Nice touch: a 408-area voicemail line for tipsters wary of Internet TCP/IP connections. The quasi-anonymous "we" behind the site has already learned the dirty secret of gossip blogging: "Our most viewed story to date also had the least amount of details. If Digg could engage in a round of layoffs, we’d be golden."

Eight years ago Philip Kaplan, aka Pud, turned his anonymous rumor site FuckedCompany into a modest advertising business. Today, Kaplan is chief something-or-other at AdBrite, a Sequoia-backed startup whose CEO has dutifully slashed its payroll down to profitability. By contrast, sloppy typist "FS Crew" at FuckedStartups has already thrown in the towel. "We have incredible pipeline of rumors and tips," promises the For Sale post atop the site. "We have other projects and don’t have the time to focused (sic) our 100% attention on this project." What FS Crew really means is: "Fuck, this is hard. Someone please pay me to quit." Sorry, but on Web 2.0, it's the other way around: Your customers quit you, for free.

Cue the schadenfreude brigade: AdBrite, the online-advertising network funded by Sequoia Capital, has laid off 40 of 100 employees. Why will some view this with glee? Because, a decade ago, AdBrite founder Philip Kaplan ran a site called FuckedCompany, which chronicled layoffs and cutbacks in the bursting of the bubble. AdBrite actually grew out of Kaplan's ad-sales efforts on the site. Two vice presidents are leaving, including Paul Levine, the former Yahoo executive AdBrite hired to run marketing last year. Anyone want to bet Levine will land at Zvents, a startup whose board of directors he recently joined?

An AdBrite employee who "quit after a few weeks due to so many issues, I can not even write them all" points us to this classic video of Philip Kaplan (yes, yes, the one from AdBrite and Fucked Company) breakdancing. Pretty fly for a white guy.

Oh, those halcyon years of the Internet! When men were real men, women were real women, and for $5.95 an hour they'd prove it to you! It wasn't so long ago, kids, that Philip "Pud" Kaplan of Fucked Company (yeah, the failed AdBrite CEO) was makin' home webcam videos — sexy threesome videos.

• In a fit of business brilliance, Microsoft launched a paid PC care service, thus profiting from the shittiness of its own products. [Australian IT]

Best comment of the week award (winner gets half the Webvan profits) goes to sarahka:

Dell dude photoshopped