Ryan Gorer had no plans to start another dot-com business.
The 34-year-old Boston-based tech consultant had been there, done that — his circa-1999 dot-com business crashed and burned along with the tidal wave of others like it. Fast-forward to 2006, however, and Gorer finds his new Internet advertising company, MotionMall.com, one of a growing number of New England-based Internet companies taking another shot at e-business.
In fact, the number of Internet companies doing business in New England is now at 765 — and rising toward the highwater mark seen during the early-2000s height-of-the-hype total of 891, according to Mass High Tech directory database research.
Bloggers download MotionMall’s technology from a hosted site to create their own Amazon.com advertisements. Amazon, in turn, pays a small fee on up to 85 percent of the referrals. MotionMall reels in the remaining 15 percent — not bad when you consider that the web attracts an estimated 75,000 new blogs a day.
That kind of technology and advertising opportunity simply didn’t exist a decade ago.
“Passive revenue is a beautiful thing,” said Gorer, whose company’s operating expenses are made up of mostly hosting fees. “It wouldn’t be possible without this evolution of the Internet.”
The renewed, steady sprouting of websites is happening amid a rise in the number and sophistication of web-based applications and a higher level of comfort among web users — an environment dubbed “Web 2.0” by some industry pundits and debated by others.
Advertisers, meanwhile, are leaving the debate to others and concentrating on the web’s money trail, said Charles Lax, managing general partner of GrandBanks Capital Inc. in Newton.
“Advertising is proving to be very, very successful on the Internet,” Lax said. “The venture capital community is funding those business models and finding them worth backing if they have the right content.”
The changing dynamics are also prompting outdated sites to overhaul or upgrade, said Heather Dougherty, a senior analyst for Nielsen/NetRatings Inc.
“It’s a very positive sign that we have new sites and technology popping up. They’re forcing current and future sites to be innovative,” she said.
Along with Gorer, some of today’s New England innovators are among the originators of e-commerce. For instance, in Cambridge, the entrepreneurs who founded e-commerce software company Art Technology Group Inc. in 1991 started a similar site-design company called Allurent Inc. in 2004. That firm is now serving customers looking to use the latest Web 2.0 tools. Allurent recently signed Urban Outfitters Inc., a multibillion-dollar retailer, as a customer.
In Norwalk, Conn., the founders of Kayak.com, a travel search engine, are all veterans of established search sites — Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia.
Other New England-based dot-coms are: Quincy’s WickedLocal.com, Somerville’s Reddit.com, Boston-based Carbonite.com, Framingham-based Vivox.com and Brookline’s GottaFlirt.com.
Kayak, which launched and received $7 million in venture capital last year, uses a different model and different technology than other dot-coms, said Paul English, Kayak co-founder and CTO.
The site uses AJAX technology, which allows users to refresh web pages without clicking to a new page. It also performs searches, but sends users directly to airline or hotel websites for purchase instead of closing the sale, to avoid what English describes as an inherent conflict in business model. Kayak instead earns a small referral fee in addition to revenue from site advertisers. “Consumers are ready to try new services and the trust is there more than in the past,” he said.
During the last three years, time spent on personal computers increased from 25.5 hours a month to 30.5 hours a month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, which offers insight into Kayak’s ability to attract more advertising dollars.
Gorer, meanwhile, wouldn’t reveal the number of MotionMall’s customers but said new users continue to download its program every day.
“The marginal cost of an additional customer for MotionMall is zero, but the potential benefit is greater than zero,” he said. “The Web 2.0 environment has made it more possible to do something like this.”
