Let's Party Like It's 1999

They say that conventional wisdom is wrong.

If that is so, then maybe we aren't in bubble 2.0, because everywhere I look this morning, I am hearing we are back in 1999.

First there is David Carr's confusing argument why we should pay for the NY Times. I am with David's daughter in case you wondered.  In the piece, David says:

We have been through this before, back in 1999, with everyone rushing to harvest eyeballs and then worrying about making them cash-flow later. But this time around, at least on the Web, there is a business model that involves search, targeted advertising and the ability to scale.

Then there is Rebecca Buckman's roundup on VC investing in the WSJ (no link love for paid content).  Rebecca opens up that piece with:

It's looking almost like 1999 again in Silicon Valley, with Internet investments snaring a significant increase in funding from venture capitalists in the third quarter.

It certainly looks like 1999 from where I sit too but I've always been served best by being a contrarian.  Tough call.

Comments

[Dan Cornish]

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.......

[eric goldstein]

question for you...back in the first bubble (bubble 1.0) was everyone talking about it being a bubble like they are now? i'd tend to agree with you that one sign of a bubble is that people aren't calling it one. look at how long housing has been called a bubble yet it has kept rising throughout.

[hugh macleod]

Don't let the giddy headrush cloud your judgement, Wilson ;-)

[charlie crystle]

How much money has flowed into Web 2.0 companies? How many business plans do you see (as a %) that cater to the buzzwords?

[Hooman Radfar]

I have been following the growing number of folks that are drawing comparisons to the Web 2.0 movement and the "dot-com" boom. Although I agree that there is a comparable level of excitment regarding Web 2.0, that does not imply that it is 1999. It is 2005. The circumstances are most certainly different--computing is cheap, broadband is ubiquitous, and our culture has changed.

That being said, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. The companies and projects that are visible today were funded months ago. Within the next several months we will see another wave of better funded, more ground-breaking firms. All the VCs out there know this to be the case because you placed the bets.

The race has started. It's coming whether we want it, or not. The only question that remains is who will be left standing at the end.

[Ari]

In response to Carr's piece, I think it (perhaps accidentally) raises a good point about the differences between print and online media. With print media, charging for a subscription can be justified because it increases the value of your ads - an advertiser might value 1,000 paying subscribers more than a circulation of 10,000 that is mostly given out for free, since the people who forked over some money are far more likely to actually read the paper and hence see the ads. On the other hand, with online media this no longer applies - you have exact numbers on people who are viewing each page so the question of "is anyone actually reading this" is already answered for you.

This may be an obvious point but it seems to me that it is often glossed over.

[Andrew Lin]

I approached his post with caution but came out a hessitant believer. I’m writing more about it here.