The Guardian and Scottish website New Economy Scotland both report that Work24 (www.work24.co.uk), the joint internet venture launched by Scottish Power and the Royal Bank of Scotland last summer has closed, after the site gained less than 10% of the registrations it planned to attract.

Work24 was set up as a portal for small businesses to gain information on finance as well as access to business-related news articles, discounted IT products and stationery and access to online training courses provided by Wide Learning. £30 million had been invested into the site, which had aimed to charge customers £10 a month after an initial 6 month trial period.

Although the announcement was made at the end of January, the site itself is still up-and-running, although it did manage to crash TrainingZONE's computer yesterday. The sites' former employees have launched a separate website, www.work24talent.co.uk/ advertising their services, following in the footsteps of former boo.com staff last year.