"If you put deer on an island and give them food," he told BusinessWeek Online in March, "the population of deer explodes. When winter comes, there's a crash, and only the strongest survive. The Internet isn't revolutionary, it's evolutionary."

Darwin-speak works well for Wolff. While other dot-coms drop like flies -- at least 555 since January 2000, according to one estimate -- analysts and the trade media are trumpeting Homestore as one of the few dot-coms with a serious, working business model.

Homestore, a real estate dot-com that offers home listings and other services, has far outgrown its competitors, including MSN's Home Advisor, which features fewer than half of Homestore's property listings and attracts less traffic. Homestore has delighted Wall Street by forming high-profile partnerships with giant corporations such as AOL and Cendant, and recently shook off a Department of Justice antitrust inquiry. While other dot-coms are declaring bankruptcy or losing their NASDAQ listings (including former Homestore competitor Homeseeker.com), Homestore stock is currently selling for $28.50 -- down from a high of $55 last September.

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After the company released quarterly earnings reports Wednesday, it stock rose 10 percent -- not bad for a company that lost $72 million over the last quarter. But by using "pro forma" accounting measures, which exclude restructuring charges, charges for stock options and various other expenses, Homestore was able to report that it had actually made $14.5 million. Even if by standard accounting measures the company still isn't profitable, Homestore is at least making a stab at proving how a business can make money online. It is, as the econo-Darwinists say, a survivor.

Homestore executives say the company is successful because it chose not to repeat the mistakes of the past. In contrast to failed dot-coms like Pets.com and Webvan that sought to re-create an entire industry online, Homestore looked for a niche that complemented, rather than threatened, the established realty business. Wolff took advantage of something the Net is good at: distributing information, to change the way people look for homes. Home buyers go to Homestore not to buy a house online but to find a house they like and a real estate agent to help them buy it. Realtors who list themselves with Homestore are the company's primary customers, providing 65 percent of its revenue.

But some of the very partnerships that are titillating Wall Street may end up alienating agents. Many are less than thrilled with the terms of the agreements that bind them to Homestore, and may not be inclined to renew them. The agreement with AOL gives Homestore a huge audience, but could be devastating if Homestore stock falters. Most problematic of all, the deal that launched Homestore, a partnership with the National Association of Realtors, has some inherent contradictions that call into question whom Homestore is most loyal to, its customers or its shareholders.

Meanwhile, Wolff and his family trust are also busy selling stock, and lots of it. In the first five months of 2001, they've sold over 550,000 Homestore shares for roughly $16 million. A Homestore spokesperson says the stock dump is a "systematic" move, but it does call into question Wolff's own faith in his company and the future of its stock price.

Homestore may well represent the survival of the fittest after the dot-com boom and bust. But if the problems bubbling beneath the surface end up defeating the company, the answers to some very basic questions about how to succeed commercially online will become even harder to find. If replacing an entire industry on the Internet, as Webvan tried to do, doesn't work, and if making Homestore-style online/offline partnerships creates insuperable contradictions, then how does one build an online business? Will anyone survive Internet evolution?

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