The difference between now and 1999 is that it boomed everywhere including even here in the rust belt. Now the action is limited to a few counties in the entire country.
In 1999 I was living in Orlando, Fl, of all places. I was a warm-body "consultant" for a "software company" whose business was really selling my time to customize their crappy website software at $275/hr (out of which I was paid $30/hr... not bad for a 19-year-old dropout, which is the point I guess). My stock options were priced at $280/share if I recall.
This time around sure does feel bubbly in San Francisco, but as you say it's only like that in a few areas which happen to overlap with concentrations of journalists.
I think the big difference between today and 1999 was that back then so many people didn't know what they were doing. Companies spent tons of money to not see results and you had tons of warm bodies filling seats with no real biz plan in sight. Also without broadband being everywhere there was a ton of speculation about what would happen next. So as much as I do feel like we're in a bubble of sorts -- it still doesn't feel as crazy as the first dot.com bust because people do seem to know what they're doing just a bit more.
Erm, maybe we should be a little more scrutinous of where our bubble predictions come from?
"The number of tech-related jobs in San Francisco is near its record 34,000 in 2000, the pinnacle of the Internet bubble, according to analysis by real estate consultant Jones Lang LaSalle."
"Nearly 150,000 tech jobs are expected to be added this year, says Sophia Koropeckyj, an economist at Moody’s Analytics."
"Prospective employers alternately pitched themselves as “hot” promising start-ups, nestled in cool neighborhoods such as San Francisco and bursting with venture-capital cash."
