The new year has brought little cheer for a raft of dot.com companies which pinned their last hopes on a bumper Christmas season that failed to materialise, especially in the US.

Sales were generally up, but not enough to persuade reluctant investors to continue pouring their money into companies with an insatiable appetite for growth and little aptitude for profit.

EToys is the latest to admit defeat and announce it will close its European operations this month.

The basic problem for many of these companies is that they expected the public to be as enthused about the online world of technology as they were themselves and to be as comfortable with the bewildering array of jargon and geek-speak. People who did not understand the process were being asked to commit themselves to it. They didn't.

At the end of the day, as the dot.com generation is discovering rapidly, it does not pay to run too far ahead of your target market.