Tuesday, May 17, 2011

More Evidence of a Late-Stage "Social Networking" Bubble

From the WSJ, "In an echo of the era when day traders scrambled in and out of technology stocks during the 1990s, wealthy individual investors such as Mr. Williams are flocking to a new crop of Internet darlings, pushing the values of those companies sky high."

You would have to be so obtuse to be hanging on to your stakes in internet bubble companies when the signs of overvaluation and delusional expectations are so obvious.

I wonder whether, in a decade, the term "social networking" will seem as silly as Bill Gates' mid-90s "information superhighway" seems to us today?

3 comments:

Taylor Conant said...

I'm always told it's about eyeballs. But what are the eyeballs worth if they're out of work and up to those very same eyeballs in debt?

CP said...

Wow, very late stage:
"Companies like Facebook, Google and Zynga are so hungry for the best talent that they are buying start-ups to get their founders and engineers — and then jettisoning their products."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/technology/18talent.html

eahilf said...

LinkedIn was valued at about $15 million when Menlo Park, California-based Sequoia first invested in 2003, according to two people familiar with the matter. LinkedIn’s current valuation indicates a return of more than 280 times.

So you don't have to look all that far or hard to find examples. What could this company ever possibly be except a vehicle to sell advertising? What kind of thinking believes that is an economic model that can lead to prosperity?