"[2] Launched with a great deal of hype in the spring of 2000,[3] Inside was a victim of the dot-com bubble and the early 2000s recession, and it closed down at the end of 2001.

[5] Inside.com was co-founded by Kurt Andersen, Michael Hirschorn, and Deanna Brown (calling themselves Powerful Media)[6][3] in 1999, with the announced goal of helping to "reinvent a form, not unlike magazines at the beginning of the twentieth century, or even newspapers and the novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth.

"[4][9][3] Starting with an "all-star" staff of 72 stocked by "old media" talent from the likes of Time, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, Disney, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Observer and Rolling Stone,[3] Inside.com launched in May 2000[8] as an online media news website.

[6] The site was divided into sections — "Inside Dope," "Daily Digest," "Power Index," "Ratings," "This Morning's Talk Shows," "Mogul Astrology," and "Today's Gossip";[3] subscribers were also promised data-driven lists of TV ratings, box office numbers, CD sales, and the like.

The site never got more than a few thousand subscribers, and like many other publications covering media and technology, the company couldn't figure out how to turn a profit.