An Online Loss of Faith

Analysts' predictions about the booming Christian market and the Internet's unequivocal ability to serve it notwithstanding, it seems that nothing short of divine intervention can guarantee the success of dot coms, even those based on religious themes. Witness the October crash of iBelieve.com, a VC-backed online Christian lifestyle and e-tailing site.

According to its vision statement, iBelieve.com set out to be the "preferred Internet gathering place for Christians worldwide to come, experience and grow in their faith."

The e-tailer, backed by Chicago-based venture capitalist Madison Dearborn Partners, debuted in January with some $30 million in start-up money. Boulder, Colo.-based Web services company XOR won a three-year contract, beating out a Big Five competitor, to manage and operate e-business for iBelieve.com.

The site included content on Christian lifestyle, bulletin boards, chat rooms, e-cards and an online prayer request-and-response system. Its e-tailing arm featured products integrated throughout the site, and a store where visitors could purchase a wide variety of books, Bibles, spiritual resources and even clothing.

From a pure business perspective, the site's VC-backing and defined e-business plans made it no different from any other for-profit business that XOR has done work for. But, on another level, the site's goal of becoming one of the largest online Christian communities brought a higher level of purpose for many members of XOR's project team.

XOR CEO Greg Jacobsen thinks the creation of spiritual online sites like iBelieve.com came as good news for some technology buffs, who may have been disappointed early on by the prominence of pornography, gambling and other questionable behaviors on the Internet.

"The Internet certainly has a lot of dark sides to it, and a lot of people were excited that here, finally, we were going to see the Internet doing something very positive," Jacobsen says. "I think that's what a lot of our own people thought,that hopefully this might be a glimpse of things to come."

The site started out with promise, attracting 550,000 registered members during its nine-month life span and doubling revenue each month, its founders say. But despite those numbers, the company could not find investors willing to hand over additional capital. Aside from its retail business, the founders of iBelieve.com had also hoped to introduce a filtered search engine--OnFaith.com--for Christians willing to pay $20 a month. But financial troubles with prospective partners kept that from becoming a reality.

In the end, the company's vision of becoming the No. 1 Christian lifestyle Web site never materialized, with iBelieve.com shutting down its servers in October.

"Unfortunately, no one could predict that capital for Internet companies would dry up like it did," said an iBelieve.com spokesman when announcing the impending shutdown. "My sense is that people just don't understand the Christian market."