I had the opportunity last week to participate in a panel discussion on Web 2.0 hosted by TiE in Seattle. The panel included several accomplished participants, including Joe Heitzeberg from Snapvine, Jonathan Sposato from Picnik, and Jordan Mitchell from Others Online.
Several people have posted on the discussion at the panel, which ranged from early stage fund raising strategies to our favorite 3D avatar services. John Cook from the Seattle PI, who did a great job keeping us all in line, posted an excellent summary is on his blog.
The Wall Street Journal published an article today about how "old-timers" who survived the late 1990s in technology now keep track of bubble indicators. Marc Andreesen has a great comment: to paraphrase, there's no bubble until people stop talking about bubbles all the time. This is my view as well. With Google nearing $200B in market cap, though, a lot of people are talking about bubbles. I'd add a corollary to this: you don't know a bubble when you're in it. In my experience, the bubble, if and when it happens, will end when we don't expect it. Condos in Miami, anyone?
My personal favorite bubble screen is the conference to market indicator. On an absolute basis, how attend a conference is not the right metric. The auto industry is big, and the North America Auto Show attracts lots of people. In my view, in technology conference trends the indicator is how narrow the topic area is compared to the size of the market.
This weekend there were two nearly concurrent Facebook development conferences in the Valley. Does this mean we have a bubble in Facebook apps? Maybe, maybe not. I'm a huge Facebook fan. But we'll have to see how big the market is. You never know a bubble until it pops.
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