

Bubble Bubble Everywhere - maurycy
http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/bubble-bubble-everywhere/

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iamelgringo
So, even if the stock market does lose 20% of it's valuation in a "stock
bubble," who is going to lose? It's going to be big blue chip financial
companies that are overexposed to bad mortgages they purchased. And, blue chip
tech stocks like Yahoo, GOOG, Intel, MSFT and HP might take a beating, but
what does that mean for the startup scene?

Even if there's another round of layoff's in Silicon Valley, I think that it
will be awful for the people involved, but it will only mean good things for
startups as there will be more unemployed software engineers around looking
for work. That's good for potential employers/founders.

It might mean that fewer companies will be interested in acquiring startups,
but that just means that you still have to be smart about your burn rate and
find a source of revenue. You might not be able to build to flip quite so
easily.

A bubble isn't going to stop people from using the internet and it's not going
to stop companies from advertising online.

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maurycy
Yes, but maybe it can make smaller ad budgets? Or, smaller VC budgets? Less
people choosing to go into the startup scene, instead of safe jobs? It is all
about expectations I'd say.

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sabat
What the heck is a "safe job"?

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maurycy
This one you perceive a safe job.

Yeah, yeah, we all know here that there's no safe jobs anymore, and in our
economy we're all exposed to global risks. yada yada But, besides the Startup
News, there are people who still believe that computer engineer in Microsoft,
Merill Lynch or whatever else, is "a safe job".

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axod
"The best is yet to come, as Advertising rates will increase and I think
Microsoft will become a leader in the space as they are innovating and Brian
McAndrews who leads the Advertiser and Publisher Solutions seems to know what
he is talking about."

That is simply laughable. Ask anyone who has used msn adcenter vs google
adwords. Microsoft have absolutely no clue whatsoever IMHO.

~~~
samson
I'm not so sure that Marcus's claim is entirely invalid. I think what he is
trying to propose is that in the long run the competition that Google will be
facing by having another ad publisher like Microsoft, will make things better
for site owners as it will give more competition in the ad space.

As we know Google is cash filled with money made from their ads program. If
Microsoft is willing to give more of that money back to the site owners to
gain market share, Google will have to react.

~~~
axod
It's not the money though. If microsoft offered far higher rates for
publishers, and far lower rates for advertisers than google does, I'd still be
reluctant to use microsoft. The main blocker is that they simply cannot write
webapps. The interface for dealing with adcenter is amongst the worst webapps
of all time. It's a very very slow painful procedure to get anything done at
all. Things you can do in adwords in 5 minutes can take hours in msn adcenter.

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aswanson
Stop talking about bubbles and get back to coding. All the billionaires made
in that era didn't pay attention to the idoicy going on around them. They just
executed. Now I'm off to follow my own advice.

~~~
david927
And this is how you can tell it really is a bubble: people talking about
becoming billionaires. It's silly and smacks of a get-rich-quick scheme.

If a bubble is best defined as irrational exuberance taking valuations as
multiples of intrinsic value, then the fact that the exit strategies are
different and there are fewer IPO's than 10 years ago is irrelevent. Web 2.0
seems to be clearly Dot Com Bubble 2.0.

~~~
samson
Just cause he included billionaire in that sentence, does not safely support
the inference that he's thinking of a get rich quick scheme, or prove that we
are in a bubble.

People will always look to the achievement's of Bill Gates and Larry Page
regardless of the cycles the industry maybe in. In a recession or depression,
investors will still always quote Warren Buffett.

~~~
david927
... the achievements of Bill Gates ...

Exactly.

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sabat
My thoughts exactly. Anyone who thinks were in a tech bubble doesn't
understand what those words mean. We are not in a stock market bubble. And a
stock market bubble was what burst in 2000. The downturn in the economy was
not caused by small startups failing, but by new, swollen public companies
shutting their doors.

If Facebook, Meebo, Bebo, Plentyoffish, iminlikewithyou, justin.tv, reddit,
digg, Pandora, Last.fm, Hotornot, TechCrunch, PodShow, Boing Boing, Life
Hacker, Prosper.com, 43 Things, SixApart, Gawker Media, 37 Signals,
Wordpress.com, Scribd, and Zimbra all went out of business _tomorrow,
simultaneously_ , we would not see the huge rash of pink slips we saw in 2000.
The stock market would not crash because of it.

It's not the same at all. Funny names != a bubble, and neither do over-
valuations by private investors, and neither does a lot of entrepreneurs
trying to start companies. It's called capitalism. Get used to it.

~~~
timr
Indeed. We're not in a tech bubble -- we're in a real estate bubble. And as
far as the crash of _that_ market is concerned, we're still in the early part
of March 10, 2000. The real pain has yet to begin.

The bottom line is that I wouldn't go whistling past the graveyard quite yet.
A truly astronomical amount of debt has been accumulated by normal (i.e. not
rich) people in the process of puffing up US home values. Unlike the dot-com
crash, a worst-case scenario in the housing market wipes out the finances of a
huge block of US consumers. And without free-spending, US consumers you can
kiss the market for most small internet companies goodbye.

The apocalypse doesn't have to come from within; the people who are worried
about a "tech" bubble aren't paying attention.

