FC founder Philip Kaplan has new online service in the works

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As the founder of a site with an obscene name that ruthlessly chronicled the flame-out of the dot-coms, Philip Kaplan was the ultimate bad boy of Web 1.0.

He blasted onto the Web 2.0 scene, armed with the insights he gained selling advertising on his unmentionable website. Gone were the trademark snark and coarse bravado. He traded New York City for San Francisco, ground zero for the Internet boom and bust, and, as we described in a 2005 profile, established himself as a respectable online advertising entrepreneur backed by blue-chip Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.

‘I knew that if I concentrated on AdBrite I could probably make a big company out of it,’ he wrote in a e-mail to followers of his old site, which he calls ‘FC’ to get past spam filters.

‘But leave my cushy life in NYC? No more waking up at noon, updating FC for an hour, and spending the rest of the day cashing FC checks and watching porn? ... It was a hard decision, but, like, I’m a man now. Twenty-nine!’

Now that the bleak economy is once again using the Internet as a punching bag Manny Pacquiao style, plenty of folks urged Kaplan to reprise his role as savager of start-ups. But Kaplan burst that bubble.

Instead, we soon may meet a much kinder, gentler incarnation of Kaplan. He is encouraging friends via Twitter to sign up for a new service called the Kaplan Index, which says it’s going to help people ‘get recognized for your skills in 2009.’ It will launch in the next few weeks. In a nod to his notorious past, he has reclaimed his old nickname, Pud.

What that says, if anything, about his online ad venture, AdBrite, is unclear.

Kaplan ain’t talking about his new project yet. We’ll let you know when he does.

-- Jessica Guynn