Gawker
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web 2.0
The bubble that wasn't
Jason Calacanis, the mop-haired founder of Mahalo, an overfunded Web directory, is musing on Twitter about "tickers and rallies past" — a Proustian substitution of stock markets for madeleines. But what, exactly, does he have to be nostalgic for?
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By Owen ThomasComment by JasonCalacanis: JCAL still in the game 4.87m uniques last month & Knicks got $40m in cap space 2010 LeBron coming December 15th Project A threads the... 4 Responses | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
The microbubble in microblogging
If there is a Web 2.0 bubble, it is surely in microblogging, a field popularized by Twitter.. Countless startups are thriving on the myth that sharing yourself online is too hard. Pownce cofounder Leah Culver graces the cover of MIT's alumni magazine. San Francisco's most self-involved Webheads can't stop gabbing about FriendFeed, which, as our intern Alaska Miller smartly explained to his mother, is a place where people who are really obsessed with the Internet can talk to others of like mind. And then there's Plurk, the much-mocked Twitter clone, which has drawn such derision that Web hipsters made up a company and claimed it had bought Plurk. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by MichelleMMM: For there to be a bubble at all, doesn't there need to be vast numbers of adopters? more » | Other threads
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valleyspeak
Five words or phrases to short on the slang stock exchange
CollegeHumor cofounder Ricky Van Veen has decided to short the word "douche."After a strong resurgence in 2005 and showing strong staying power through 2007, lately most of the people I've seen use it fit into two categories: 1) people over 40 who have finally had the word passed down the cool chain from their younger friends and coworkers. 2) the "douches" originally being described themselves.
We second this call. In fact, our own very special correspondent banned douche not long ago. Below, five more words we'd like to see tank. State your portfolio position and suggest other picks in the comments. More » -
bubble 2.0
Are VCs fleeing the Web? Yes and no
Most venture capitalists are adept followers of the herd. As such, their investments are best seen as trailing indicators — the financial detritus of events past, rather than predictors of what to come. Is there a bubble in Web startups? The numbers themselves are as confused as investors. Dow Jones says the first quarter saw a record $1.58 billion in venture capital invested in Internet companies. Thomson Reuters says its figure of $1.3 billion was down 7 percent from the fourth quarter. Data about VC investments is hard to obtain, and the two categorize companies differently. Anecdotally, it's clear that smart VCs have stopped funding every new social-media website and online-ad network that cross their desks. But the Valley remains awash in dumb money that has yet to be called home. The popping of this bubble will take more than a quarter's time.
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By Owen ThomasComment by Widget Economist: Venture capitalists are trying to put money into the creative, tertiary sector. These web 2.0 sites start from the base... more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
The recession is here
Attention, Valley of the Heart's Delight: There's bad news in theNew York Times. The bullet points:- Only five venture capital backed companies went public last quarter. 31 turned public in 2007's fourth quarter.
- Only 28 percent of all venture-backed companies that went public last year have shares trading above their IPO level. Usually, that number is around 50 percent.
- Angel investment is flat after growing every year since 2003.
- As the dollar drops, outsourced labor costs more.
- 2007's first three months saw just 56 acquisitions, compared to 83 in the fourth quarter.
- 2008 will see the local economy create 10,000 new jobs, down from 17,700 in 2007 and 25,000 in 2006 — the year Google acquired YouTube.
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bubble 2.0
The bubble to end all bubbles?
Are we in a bubble? Far too late to be asking that question, says Chris Nolan, a former Valley newspaper gossip who now runs a startup, Spot-On. She weighs in on the current market crisis and its effects on the tech business. Her thesis: New regulations will on investment banks will bring an end to the tech-stock bubbles on which Valley VCs have feasted. (I asked if this meant she was back in the tech-gossip game; Nolan's column served as one of this website's inspirations. "I'm writing about business and politics," she demurred.) Nolan compares sketchy mortgages approved by banks to the wafer-thin startups taken public by stockbrokers a decade ago. A brief version of her 887-word argument, followed by my take on where Nolan goes wrong: More » -
bubble 2.0
No one has any idea how much Facebook applications are worth
SuperPoke is worth $13 million according to Facebook application tracker Adonomics. The site awards applications like Slide's Top Friends and RockYou's SuperWall values in the tens of millions of dollars — which provides some of the basis for the 9-digit figures that Slide has commanded, and RockYou hopes to get, in venture capitalists' estimates of their worth. Adonomics' numbers are as sketchy as those valuations, however. Facebook's homegrown Video application only has 807 active users, according to Adonomics stats. Something's off here, and I don't think it's just Facebook's $15 billion value. More »
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Comment by microserfin: Zuck and crew will be eating crow by next year once they all realize the FB crack pipe they... more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Jim Breyer times his bubble-popping just right
Fortune magazine, ever servile, provides a ready platform for the powerful with something to say. The latest on stage: Jim Breyer, the Accel Partners VC with a seat on Facebook's board. Breyer has a fair point: We may be seeing the cyclical bursting of another Silicon Valley bubble. Breyer says this happens once every seven years, roughly. But his timing is suspicious. Last October, Breyer gladly took Microsoft's bubbly $240 million for a microscopic stake in Facebook. Declaring the bursting of a bubble now may help hasten its advent, and in the process, make it harder for Facebook's rivals to raise money. But for Fortune readers' tech-stock portfolios, an early warning might have been more useful. Why didn't the magazine ring him up last fall? Fortune never mentions this. (Illustration by Sean McCabe for Fortune) -
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bubble 2.0
VMware down 17 percent since IPO
"There is no bubble in technology," said Facebook board member Peter Thiel in December. Tell that to investors who bought into VMware's IPO. [VMW]
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Comment by Dave Malhotra: Well $29 was the offering price. The select few who got allocations at that price were institutions, "friends and families"... more » | Other threads
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the chart
Happy birthday, destroyer of hopes and dreams!
Eight years ago today, on March 10, 2000, the Nasdaq closed at 5,048.62, an all-time high. Then the bubble burst, Marketwatch notes. By October 2002, the Nasdaq was down to 1,114.11, a 78 percent drop in less than three painful years. In fact, we're still not over it. Check out the chart. The Nasdaq today stands 56 percent lower than 2000's bubbly high-water mark. -
bubble 2.0
The 10 most memorable tech Super Bowl ads
Behold the best tech ad in Super Bowl history: Apple's "1984" ad, which cost $1.6 million to make and run, and only aired nationally once. The following nine ads, while perhaps not as iconic, are all fascinating in how they seek to make the mysteries of tech compelling to the masses. More »
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Comment by ceokhan: The Apple ad was way ahead of its time... as always.. The eTrade monkey is adorable! lol But yea I agree... more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Guy in D.C. does something to make tech stocks go up
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke made a couple of moves to infuse banks with more cash before the market opened this morning. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bernanke said the Fed would hold auctions to provide funds to banks and establish foreign exchange swap lines with other central banks. The idea was to loosen up the credit market. Maybe expand some of those straitened tech budgets we warned about yesterday. Right. We think. OK, so we don't know what this move means either. But tech stocks soared on the news, so who cares? Thanks, guy in D.C.! Big movers: HP, IBM, Google, Apple, Intel, Amazon.com and Research In Motion. (Photo by David Prior)
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Comment by 0x6772: @jeff419: You were doing real well there until you decided to proselytize. more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Expect a tech spending slowdown in 2008
Wall Street analysts and Sand Hill Road's moneymen have pitched tech stocks as a safe haven amidst the credit crisis. Perhaps not. While tech spending continues to outpace inflation, which is running around 2.1 percent, growth may have peaked this year at 6.9 percent. Next year may see growth fall by a percentage point or more. Here's the chart, as well as more anecdotal evidence compiled by the Wall Street Journal. More » -
bubble 2.0
Tech moneyman slams tech scene
About $40 billion will go into venture capital this year and recently IPO'd stocks are up 20 percent since June. But Paul Wick of J&W Seligman, which the Financial Times calls "one of the biggest specialist tech mutual fund investors," still isn't happy about the big, special tech market. He told an audience at Venture Summit West that he blames sell-side analysts for not telling investors when to cash out on bubbly valuations. More »
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Comment by 0x6772: It's refreshing to hear them say it, but maybe they could stop putting their money where the Valley's mouth is... more » | Other threads
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By Tim FaulknerComment by sample032: @waynelambright: It's different, especially because of how illiquid real estate is, and because the dollar isn't backed by real estate. Look... more » | Other threads
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clips
Yet another stupid Web 2.0 video
Set to the tune, loosely, of "We Didn't Start the Fire," Richter Scales' new video takes on Bubble 2.0. Too bad their lyrics don't even match the low bar of cleverness set by Billy Joel's widely mocked original: "Launch party, nicely dressed/What's the point? Sausage fest/Blue shirts, khaki pants/Looking like a line of ants." Since the group seems to have concocted this specifically to cater to Valleywag's ego — an idea they ripped off from the earlier "Valleyfreude" — we'd be remiss in not posting it. Not to mention our obligation to blog, blog, blog it all.
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Comment by seanpercival: i like that you guys matched up the blog title to the one in the video :) more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Facebook developers swindle each other on eBay
Since we first covered an eBay auction for a Facebook application on September 27 when Michael Zhang auctioned off LogBook for $2,550, the going price for useless applications has boomed nearly 280 percent, to judge by a similar sale yesterday. Then again, the I Am Hungry application sold for an even bubblier $20,100 in October. No wonder Facebook apologists more juiced? More »
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Comment by mariejanet: The Advent Calendar didn't reach the reserve - so the main basis for this story is rubbish. The owners of... more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
The irrational exuberance of Pets.com, which burned through $50 million in venture capital in nine short months, will no doubt be told as a cautionary tale to our children around the campfire. What other investments are scary enough to give venture capitalists nightmares? Venture Beat has helpfully condensed Inside CRM's list of the 20 worst offenders, which includes notorious failures like Web currency Flooz and Amp'd Mobile. [VentureBeat] -
the chart
Subprime slowing holiday e-commerce?
ComScore reports that October 2007 retail e-commerce increased 19 percent over the same month in 2006. Sounds healthy, until you look at the year-to-date numbers through September, which had 2007 on track for 21 percent growth. October sales are usually a leading indicator for how e-commerce fares during the holidays, so the slowing growth rate isn't good. What's the cause? The usual suspects: increasing mortgages and gas prices coupled with a decline in housing values. Just so long as I get my iPhone for Christmas, whatevs. Here's the gory chart if you're that kind of masochist. More » -
bubble 2.0
Bubble reinflates, lifting Apple and rest of Nasdaq
If you bought some Apple stock yesterday after its five-day, 20-percent drop, you've made out quite well. AAPL is up 11 percent today — lifting the rest of Nasdaq up with it.
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Comment by igneous: yeah, you cant call it a bubble when stock price correlates with growth and earnings, and not just potential. more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Millions now can buy Apple stock cheaply for retirement accounts
Apple had been on a serious tear as of late — rising almost 120 percent since the beginning of the year. All good things must come to an end. In the last four days, AAPL has shed 20 percent of its value. As Saul Hansell of the New York Times would tell you, this is a good thing if you don't already own shares of Apple. This drop isn't because of anything related to Apple. All of Nasdaq is down, thanks to fallout from the subprime lending crisis and the value of the dollar and oil prices and that gnawing fear in the pit of your gut that this is going to end badly, just like it did in 2000.
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Comment by cv: Too late, AAPL's up $13 today. You're probably better off buying YHOO right now. more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Tech bellwethers are dragging the Nasdaq composite down. So much for tech's immunity to Wall Street's subprime crisis. The Nasdaq suffered its largest two-day decline in more than five years. Cisco's cautious outlook is blamed as the trigger for the broad selloff. The network equipment manufacturer has fallen more than 12 percent in two days since its announcement. Research In Motion has also fallen more than 12 percent. Apple declined 10 percent. IBM has tumbled nearly 5 percent. And even Google is down nearly 3 percent. Do I hear a bubble starting to hiss air? [WSJ] -
venture capital
Kleiner Perkins still investing in Web, lackeys
Kleiner Perkins partner Randy Komisar freaked you out a little when he said the firm was done with Web 2.0, didn't he? ""We have absolutely no interest in funding Web 2.0 companies," he told Silicon Valley Watcher. Well, don't worry. Kleiner Perkins, which backed Amazon.com, Google, AOL, and, um, Friendster, remains in the game. More »
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Comment by Mikelamb: how can they just spout stuff and everyone reacts to it. It makes us all look like idiots out here... more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Hakia offers users rust-proof treatment, er, social features
For a while now, social-networking features have been to bubbly new websites what power windows, cupholders, and vanity mirrors used to be for new cars. Even GM can glue reflective plastic to the back of a cardboard visor. Likewise, a new site's service might not be actually useful, but it nonetheless feels obliged to offer the same bells and whistles as competitors. In other words, it allows you to sign up for spam, upload your picture and connect with other suckers. The latest example? More » -
google
Google's share price cross $700 this morning. Of course analysts at Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, AmTech Securities and Pacific Crest have all already raised their price targets to $800 or above. [Seeking Alpha]
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Comment by fatbastard: Who gives a rat's ass? I can name at least a half dozen stocks that have outperformeed Google since Google's... more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Venture capitalists still recovering from Bubble 1.0
While some of you sickos are rooting for Bubble 2.0, venture capital is just now getting over the last one. According to the National Venture Capital Association (PDF), five-year returns only turned positive again over this last quarter. The Financial Times turned the news into a pretty chart. More » -
baidu
How do you say "bubble" in Chinese?
According to Google Translate 泡沫 is Chinese for "bubble". Chinese search engine Baidu is up another 3.5 percent today to $378.35 — with a market cap just shy of Facebook's notional value at $12.8 billion. The FT Tech Blog notes that Baidu has a forward P/E ratio of 94 — that is, a comparison of its price to next year's earnings — trouncing Google's P/E of 54. Another Chinese search engine, Sohu, reported strong earnings today and anticipated future growth across the Chinese market because of advertisers' interest in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. A chart of Baidu and Google's stocks year-to-date is above.
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Comment by fatbastard: Baidu is the second largest search engine in the world. Why is it so hard to come across a valuation... more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Al Gore's cable channel worth $2 billion, says backer
Supermarket magnate Ron Burkle recently valued Al Gore's Current TV at $2 billion, the New York Times reports. You'd think that Burkle, one of Current's backers, would know when the produce is not quite ripe. By contrast, NBC Universal recently purchased the nine-year-old Oxygen Network for $925 million. Note that ComScore reports Current's site as averaging only 152,000 unique visitors a month. Sure, we should probably expect this kind of thing after Microsoft set Facebook's value at $15 billion. But still. I know the guy won a Nobel Prize and all. But anybody else starting to doubt global warming? -
bubble 2.0
Cheer up, the subprime crisis is good for tech
Ah, the subprime-mortgage crisis. Don't you love it when bad news is so good? Sure, the prolonged quasi-epileptic seizure of the credit markets has driven consumer confidence to its lowest point in two years, with 2 million borrowers behind on their mortgage payments. But why let that get you down? Especially when things are going so well in tech. Take enterprise search firm Autonomy as your model. They're gloating like Google. More » -
bubblewatch
Sean Kingston gets violent with BitTorrent
Writes HotorNot founder James Hong on BitTorrent's party this week at Fluid, where rapper Sean Kingston took the stage:Last night, almost as if to out-LA LA, SF company BitTorrent had a small party at fluid to celebrate the launch of their CDN network (brilliant business move!). They apparently arranged in conjuction with a local radio station for Ashanti and Sean Kingston to perform to the tiny crowd. I took a picture of BitTorrent's founders Bram and Ashwin to memorialize the moment, sensing that it denoted SOMETHING.. whether it's a sign that the bubble is getting bigger, or the more likely conclusion that techie work is now getting more main stream and therefore a lot cooler remains to be seen! :)
More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by sample032: I'm not convinced Ashanti and Sean Kingston are particularly notable. It's not like they're the Beastie Boys. more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
"I assume there will be carcasses strewn across the road." — Sequoia Capital VC Michael Moritz, forecasting the future of the Web industry at Web 2.0 Summit. On the cheery side, he says things are not as frighteningly frothy as they were in 1999. -
quotable
Adobe loves you even if you're drunk
"We're an enabler of Web 2.0." — Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, at the Web 2.0 Summit, describing his software-tool company's supportive role in inflating the bubble. In the morning, Chizen will make phone calls to conference goers to explain that Web 2.0 didn't really mean what it said last night. -
web 2.0 summit
Web 2.0 pitch generator — just add elevator
Always willing to lend a helping hand, Gadget Lab's Rob Beschizza created a Web 2.0 startup and press release generator. You know, so if your first Red Bull-fueled pitch crashes and burns, you can quickly con your way into a second audience with that VC. Sure, the idea may not be original — Web 2.0 generators are all the rage: A sales pitch, slogan, name, logo and website can all be yours at the click of a button. On the other hand, it's hard not to applaud an attempt to remind the world of irrational exuberance. And if you really want to have fun? Send the nonsense to Valleywag's Paul Boutin and watch him contort himself into knots trying to translate it into English.
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Comment by cv: This was far funnier when Tom Davis wrote the original buzzword bingo circa 1993 at SGI. The C program would... more » | Other threads
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the bubble
For those of you who just walked in the room
Apparently startups are getting bought for more and more money? And some people think it's a bubble? And some think it's not? That's what the International Herald Tribune tells me. If you need to explain to Mom why you're worth $10 million on paper and ten bucks in the eyes of jealous TechCrunch readers, show her the Herald Tribune's tidy summary.
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By Nick DouglasComment by cv: So it's really a messy summary, and not a tidy one, right? more » | Other threads
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google
We'll cake Manhattan
First cheese, now this. Are extravagant pastries the latest sign of a bubble? To celebrate Google's one-year anniversary in its New York Chelsea office, seven Google chefs built a scale-model cake of their block-long building. 5' long, 3' high and 2' wide, if this isn't a monument to excess, we don't know what is. Then again, maybe we're just bitter that we didn't get invited to the party. -
quotable
"Venture capitalists are still living in 1999." — Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder, Facebook board member, and VC, on today's investment climate. [BusinessWeek] -
bubble 2.0
Google worth $750 billion? And we thought Facebook was overpriced
Could Google hit $2,000 a share? Henry Blodget thinks so, but I'm not so sure. That would value GOOG at $750 billion — roughly the same as Microsoft ($279 billion), General Electric ($431 billion), and News Corp. ($70 billion) added together. And that's assuming that none of those companies grow at all — a highly unlikely proposition. Could Google be the first company worth a trillion dollars? Maybe, but I'm not placing any bets in the "first-to-a-trillion" Valleywag office pool. Remember how well predictions of a trillion-dollar market cap worked out for AOL Time Warner? (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
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Comment by cv: As a Mountain View homeowner and GOOG shareholder, sure, I'd love the damn thing to go up to $2000. Just... more » | Other threads
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reality check
Tech blogger on HuffPo: "Can you say IPO?" Answer: "No."
The new editor at TechCrunch, Erick Schonfeld, has gotten a little IPO-crazy in these heady days of Bubble 2.0. The best guess we've seen on a Huffington Post valuation is $60 million which, for a media company, is a drop in the bucket. We can't remember a tech or media company going public with a valuation anything like that. Huffington Post is the most unlikely IPO candidate since Wired in 1996 — and Wired had substantially more revenues and a real magazine business. Maybe we were onto something with the whole cheese thing. More likely? An acquisition. More »
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Comment by OaklandTechie: Believe it or not, there is a precedent for small publishers going public. My old employer NewMedia Magazine (part of... more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Cheese plates and interest-rate cuts indicate booming tech economy
An attendee at the EmTech conference reception Wednesday afternoon — okay, okay, my boss — noted that he hadn't "seen that many kinds of cheese at a party since 2000." Today the Financial Times observed that in 1998 the Federal Reserve was forced to cut rates because of credit issues and the biggest boom in history followed. So, is all this merely boom-times deja vu or a real indication of the state of the tech economy? All I'll say is if you missed your chance to cash out the first time around, the cheese barometer says to act now, before the opportunities become a bit too well-aged. (Photo by junehug)
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Comment by dula: why would you suggest that people cash out their shares in tech? If people were to take your advice, this... more » | Other threads
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bubble 2.0
Today's Fortune iMeme confab in San Francisco began with a five-minute demonstration of how to properly sit in the Herman Miller Aeron chairs set up for conference attendees. [SFGate]
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Comment by bluehenbear: Clearly, this is a sign that the next internet bubble has begun...when is that facebook IPO? more » | Other threads
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