that means there's nothing to pop. the first time around there was no plan for making money and there were hordes and hordes of companies throwing ridiculously expensive spaghetti at the wall to see if it stuck. everyone and their dog was filing for an ipo.
this time around?
there are relatively few companies with ridiculous valuations... and guess what? they're all making money. and tons of it. for god's sake, even twitter started turning a profit in '09. groupon? $800 million and more in annual revenue is a just fine pe ratio for their valuation. their financials make sense. people are paying for their services. and all those companies not making money yet are bootstrapping on next-to-nothing rather than taking on tons of investment.
it's different this time because it's not about the squishy-touchy-feely "we know better." you can't count on people knowing better. no, it's different because there's real revenue and real business models involved.
bubbles happen when there's no income to back wild speculation.
companies are offering percieved-as-valuable services and are getting paid for it.
they're primarily taking investment for expansion, not runway extension.
most of the money is from private investors instead of zillions of get-rich-hungry public speculators from an ipo.
i mean, it's only natural for information-based companies (instead of say... webvan) to go from 0-60 faster than we've ever seen in an environment where information is enabled to go from 0-60 faster than ever in recorded history.
things are fine, folks. back away from the stupid "bubble" panic button.
m3mnoch.