But in a post-dotcom world, a company must propagate its message both cleverly and cheaply if it is to avoid ending up on the dot compost heap, which is why viral, or e-mail marketing has been such a popular vehicle.
2002, Jamieson Angus McKenzie, Just in Time Technology: Doing Better with Fewer, FNO Press (2002), →ISBN, page 15:
But then the Internet and the dot com bubbles burst. Many ventures proved unworthy. Others turned into dot compost.
2004, Juliet A. Williams, "Privacy In the (Too Much) Information Age", in Public Affairs: Politics in the Age of Sex Scandals (eds. Paul Apostolidis & Juliet A. Williams), Duke University Press (2004), →ISBN, page 225:
[…] the dot-corn boom having landed in the dot-compost heap, technologies we once thought of as enabling now just seem invasive.
By 2000, a huge dose of common sense had returned to the market, turning internet hopefuls such as fashion website Boo, Clickmango and Pets.com into so-called "dot-compost".