I don't get the sense there is a huge buble yet. A lot of the companies being started are trying to be smarter. Cost to create web company is way down. Seems like most of the wasted money back in 1999 was for advertising... giving stuff away for free and blowing millions on superbowl ads, and thinking you should expand fast and hire hundreds of people before your competitor.
Second, the IPO market is pretty much non-existent so most companies are being bought by bigger ones, so the average Joe that lost money the first time around is buffered.
Still I think the YouTube deal is pretty bubblicious. We'll know in the months to come. If your 18 year old cousin says he's moving to San Francisco to start Mowgo.com and your grandmother starts asking "What's this Web 2.0 thing? Can I make money starting my own web site?" I'd get out the umbrella...
The Ballmer one is my favorite. He really fits the part of the infomercial guy.
The overall theme of all those ads, however, is that it's pretty mindboggling how primitive those graphics actually were knowing what computers are capable of today. Sometimes it's sort of unbelieveable in the context of the ads, for example the Charlie Chaplin PC junior ad, and how his rollerskate business is somehow improved %100 by a drawing of a rollerskate that looks like something done on an Etch-a-Sketch.
Anyhow, I'm also sure in twenty years whatever computer graphics are doing are going to make today's look just as bad.
I think we all have addictions, but some are dangerous. That line is crossed when it starts affecting other areas of your life in negative ways, like your work suffers, you ignore other pressing needs to feed the addiction, such as socializing, or paying rent.
That said I think I'm mildly addicted to the web, however, I have gone cold turkey from even email during vacations and didn't get the shakes. The big problem however is that I rely on the net for my job, so giving up the web completely would be a problem.
There are a lot of eyes looking at YouTube... supposedly 100 million videos watched a day. Even so I have my doubts as I feel the people that watch YouTube just want to watch videos and have no loyalty specific to YouTube. Admittedly they made web videos easy (no plug ins for QuickTime, Real, or MSN) and got people to embed videos on other sites. However I get the feeling that if YouTube craters due to copyright suits, or the company that buys them sticks ads all over everything, people will just start watching videos on some other site.
So YouTube may be a good buy at first but then the parent company will inheret all their copyright problems and bandwidth expenses... so I feel the price is really high. I will predict it will be sold but for a much lower price.
That said, if someone does buy YouTube for anywhere near $1.5 billion this will light a fire under Web 2.0 like Netscape's IPO in the ninetees. Welcome back the sock puppet and the chimps.
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I don't get the sense there is a huge buble yet. A lot of the companies being started are trying to be smarter. Cost to create web company is way down. Seems like most of the wasted money back in 1999 was for advertising... giving stuff away for free and blowing millions on superbowl ads, and thinking you should expand fast and hire hundreds of people before your competitor. Second, the IPO market is pretty much non-existent so most companies are being bought by bigger ones, so the average Joe that lost money the first time around is buffered. Still I think the YouTube deal is pretty bubblicious. We'll know in the months to come. If your 18 year old cousin says he's moving to San Francisco to start Mowgo.com and your grandmother starts asking "What's this Web 2.0 thing? Can I make money starting my own web site?" I'd get out the umbrella...
The Ballmer one is my favorite. He really fits the part of the infomercial guy. The overall theme of all those ads, however, is that it's pretty mindboggling how primitive those graphics actually were knowing what computers are capable of today. Sometimes it's sort of unbelieveable in the context of the ads, for example the Charlie Chaplin PC junior ad, and how his rollerskate business is somehow improved %100 by a drawing of a rollerskate that looks like something done on an Etch-a-Sketch. Anyhow, I'm also sure in twenty years whatever computer graphics are doing are going to make today's look just as bad.
A lot of people are addicted to television.
I think we all have addictions, but some are dangerous. That line is crossed when it starts affecting other areas of your life in negative ways, like your work suffers, you ignore other pressing needs to feed the addiction, such as socializing, or paying rent.
That said I think I'm mildly addicted to the web, however, I have gone cold turkey from even email during vacations and didn't get the shakes. The big problem however is that I rely on the net for my job, so giving up the web completely would be a problem.
There are a lot of eyes looking at YouTube... supposedly 100 million videos watched a day. Even so I have my doubts as I feel the people that watch YouTube just want to watch videos and have no loyalty specific to YouTube. Admittedly they made web videos easy (no plug ins for QuickTime, Real, or MSN) and got people to embed videos on other sites. However I get the feeling that if YouTube craters due to copyright suits, or the company that buys them sticks ads all over everything, people will just start watching videos on some other site. So YouTube may be a good buy at first but then the parent company will inheret all their copyright problems and bandwidth expenses... so I feel the price is really high. I will predict it will be sold but for a much lower price. That said, if someone does buy YouTube for anywhere near $1.5 billion this will light a fire under Web 2.0 like Netscape's IPO in the ninetees. Welcome back the sock puppet and the chimps.