Sorry -- this is one of those times when your youth shows. Among our friends (certainly anyone who does the Net for a living), "bubble" generally refers to The Great Internet Bubble of 1997 - 2000 (more or less).
During this time, numerous companies sprang up, characterized by slightly cool (occasionally slightly insane) ideas, nonsensical business plans, venture capitalists hanging out like dying animals at an oasis, zillions of stock options, paper millionaires, and lots of Aeron chairs. These companies started to go out of business when reality finally set in around 2000, and most of them finished dying when things hit bottom in 2002. (The summer of 2002 was the nadir of the computer industry.)
Now, with "Web 2.0" fever at its peak, we're seeing a lot of companies that have recognizably the same traits (albeit with fewer Aeron chairs). The general expectation is that a bunch of them will go out of business once the social-network mania collapses, although (as in the original bubble) some of the companies that actually have useful products and sensible business plans will survive. I hope for CommYou to be one of the latter...
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Date: 2008-04-24 10:27 pm (UTC)During this time, numerous companies sprang up, characterized by slightly cool (occasionally slightly insane) ideas, nonsensical business plans, venture capitalists hanging out like dying animals at an oasis, zillions of stock options, paper millionaires, and lots of Aeron chairs. These companies started to go out of business when reality finally set in around 2000, and most of them finished dying when things hit bottom in 2002. (The summer of 2002 was the nadir of the computer industry.)
Now, with "Web 2.0" fever at its peak, we're seeing a lot of companies that have recognizably the same traits (albeit with fewer Aeron chairs). The general expectation is that a bunch of them will go out of business once the social-network mania collapses, although (as in the original bubble) some of the companies that actually have useful products and sensible business plans will survive. I hope for CommYou to be one of the latter...