Have We Learned from the New Economy?

prostoalex writes "The new issue of Fast Company magazine looks at the so-called New Economy in retrospect. There were some myths about the Internet that were not true, or could be considered true only partially in the brief history of the Internet boom, there were people who got burned and those who nicely cashed out and then there were those who had to start a new life because of the Internet."

Comments

Re:I know what I learned

[master control progr]

Another book discussing the wonders of the "new economy" (post-industrialism) is Unsustainable. I just finished, it's excellent.

the roaring nineties

[gimpboy]

for further reading i would suggest: the roaring nineties written by josepth stiglitz. stiglitz, who won the nobel prize in economics, was part of the clinton administration. i just finished it and i think it gives a great overview of what went wrong and what went right with the "new economy". he is fairly balanced-being critical of both bush and clinton. also, you dont have to be an economist to appreciate the arguments presented in this text.

Re:Al Gore invinted the Internet?

[Emor dNilapasi]

This is one of those flat-out lies that won't die. If those pinheads had done even the least bit of fact-checking they would have found that this canard was the creation of RNC spin-meisters. The curious can check out these links:

http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggi ns /

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/136 40 .html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/ca mp aigns/wh2000/stories/gore032199.htm

and there are many, many more.

FWIW, we actually get the dead-tree edition of Fast Company magazine (don't ask why, it's a long story) and it's just as slick and empty as any of the old Dot-Com business plans. These people are just a waste of ink and pulp.

One way to stay in business

[dcobbler]

I'm still in business. I started building content-rich websites in 1996.

1. I saw that "information" on the web is still just "information". I'm a librarian so I knew I could do something with it.

2. I hired sharp, 20-something MLIS grads, promised them that they wouldn't get rich but that they might get to do something interesting, and told them, "throw out the rules you learned in Library School, but keep all the concepts."

3. I tried *very hard* not to spend more than I brought in in a given year and we usually succeeded.

4. I never got rich but I'm still paying the mortgage on my house and liking (for the most part) what I'm doing.

5. We constantly looked for new and better ways of doing our stuff but *never* through out the previous iteration if it seemed to still do the job.

How I did this shouldn't be a secret and I know lots of others on /. can claim the same kind of (limited) success. Nevertheless, my accountant once called me a "survivor" and it always astonished me how people would plunge headlong into the next new thing without thinking about their "survivial" at all?

dcobbler - www.digitalcobbler.com

Re:I know what I learned

[Jeff DeMaagd]

(however I think that business model is pretty old; Con-men have been around for years!)

That's exactly what it is. The "new economy" people tried to shoo off the concerns of "old economy" people by calling them outdated. "Business model?" shoo! "revenue?" shoo! In the end, it was something like a pyramid scheme.

What happened was much like the online DVD retailers, many of them bled themselves dry by trying to undercut each other, then ultimately themselves by selling too close to actual cost or even below cost, so it was a race to see who can get bankrupted last. Bargain hunters jumped on loss-leading promotional coupons in droves, but they never did form an ounce of customer loyalty like the coupon issuers probably expected. Attracting this type of customer is bad because price differences as low as 1% made or broke deals with some people.

After a while, investors started demanding profitability and started cutting off the cash flow to the "new economy" flushing toilets.