Except that they're a year and a half old. Quite the ramp-up. I think most of the people on this site would agree that a year and a half-old startup with traffic approaching zero and $8 million raised is looking like a failure.
Just for reference, Youtube went from founding to acquisition in the exact same amount of time.
Not every site has to be youtube to be successful. Lots of small sites pay for themselves, make their owners money, and handle all their traffic. This isn't bad.
As an example, I've heard my former employer mog.com managed to get a pretty darn sweet deal and continued funding out of the Sony-Gracenote-acquisition. We definitely had a slow ramp-up, and several setbacks during development (before I got there) that made the total dev time for the site startlingly long.
You're right, of course, from your perspective. I tend to be a pessimist, and like bootstrapping and sweat equity. Changes of directions, big funding rounds, the assertion that "good names" (a commenter above) mean a lot, those things I'm not really a fan of.
