Bubble Bubble Everywhere | Hacker News Reader

Bubble Bubble Everywhere

plentyoffish.wordpress.com

19 pointsmaurycy15 comments

So, even if the stock market does lose 20% of it's valuation in a "stock bubble," who is going to lose? It's going to be big blue chip financial companies that are overexposed to bad mortgages they purchased. And, blue chip tech stocks like Yahoo, GOOG, Intel, MSFT and HP might take a beating, but what does that mean for the startup scene?

Even if there's another round of layoff's in Silicon Valley, I think that it will be awful for the people involved, but it will only mean good things for startups as there will be more unemployed software engineers around looking for work. That's good for potential employers/founders.

It might mean that fewer companies will be interested in acquiring startups, but that just means that you still have to be smart about your burn rate and find a source of revenue. You might not be able to build to flip quite so easily.

A bubble isn't going to stop people from using the internet and it's not going to stop companies from advertising online.

Yes, but maybe it can make smaller ad budgets? Or, smaller VC budgets? Less people choosing to go into the startup scene, instead of safe jobs? It is all about expectations I'd say.

What the heck is a "safe job"?

This one you perceive a safe job.

Yeah, yeah, we all know here that there's no safe jobs anymore, and in our economy we're all exposed to global risks. yada yada But, besides the Startup News, there are people who still believe that computer engineer in Microsoft, Merill Lynch or whatever else, is "a safe job".

"The best is yet to come, as Advertising rates will increase and I think Microsoft will become a leader in the space as they are innovating and Brian McAndrews who leads the Advertiser and Publisher Solutions seems to know what he is talking about."

That is simply laughable. Ask anyone who has used msn adcenter vs google adwords. Microsoft have absolutely no clue whatsoever IMHO.

I'm not so sure that Marcus's claim is entirely invalid. I think what he is trying to propose is that in the long run the competition that Google will be facing by having another ad publisher like Microsoft, will make things better for site owners as it will give more competition in the ad space.

As we know Google is cash filled with money made from their ads program. If Microsoft is willing to give more of that money back to the site owners to gain market share, Google will have to react.

It's not the money though. If microsoft offered far higher rates for publishers, and far lower rates for advertisers than google does, I'd still be reluctant to use microsoft. The main blocker is that they simply cannot write webapps. The interface for dealing with adcenter is amongst the worst webapps of all time. It's a very very slow painful procedure to get anything done at all. Things you can do in adwords in 5 minutes can take hours in msn adcenter.

Stop talking about bubbles and get back to coding. All the billionaires made in that era didn't pay attention to the idoicy going on around them. They just executed. Now I'm off to follow my own advice.

And this is how you can tell it really is a bubble: people talking about becoming billionaires. It's silly and smacks of a get-rich-quick scheme.

If a bubble is best defined as irrational exuberance taking valuations as multiples of intrinsic value, then the fact that the exit strategies are different and there are fewer IPO's than 10 years ago is irrelevent. Web 2.0 seems to be clearly Dot Com Bubble 2.0.

Just cause he included billionaire in that sentence, does not safely support the inference that he's thinking of a get rich quick scheme, or prove that we are in a bubble.

People will always look to the achievement's of Bill Gates and Larry Page regardless of the cycles the industry maybe in. In a recession or depression, investors will still always quote Warren Buffett.

... the achievements of Bill Gates ...

Exactly.

I wasn't talking about people becoming billionaires, but you could be right: maybe there will never be another billionaire made ever again. Getting back to coding doesn't smack of a get rich quick scheme, just an exhortation to cut the bullshit. Does it matter if there is one or not? If you are making something that is fulfilling a need you shouldn't care.

At any rate, I'm hypocritical by responding to a response of a response to my criticism to stop the bubble talk and just to get 'er done. Let's end the recursion now.

My thoughts exactly. Anyone who thinks were in a tech bubble doesn't understand what those words mean. We are not in a stock market bubble. And a stock market bubble was what burst in 2000. The downturn in the economy was not caused by small startups failing, but by new, swollen public companies shutting their doors.

If Facebook, Meebo, Bebo, Plentyoffish, iminlikewithyou, justin.tv, reddit, digg, Pandora, Last.fm, Hotornot, TechCrunch, PodShow, Boing Boing, Life Hacker, Prosper.com, 43 Things, SixApart, Gawker Media, 37 Signals, Wordpress.com, Scribd, and Zimbra all went out of business tomorrow, simultaneously, we would not see the huge rash of pink slips we saw in 2000. The stock market would not crash because of it.

It's not the same at all. Funny names != a bubble, and neither do over-valuations by private investors, and neither does a lot of entrepreneurs trying to start companies. It's called capitalism. Get used to it.

Indeed. We're not in a tech bubble -- we're in a real estate bubble. And as far as the crash of that market is concerned, we're still in the early part of March 10, 2000. The real pain has yet to begin.

The bottom line is that I wouldn't go whistling past the graveyard quite yet. A truly astronomical amount of debt has been accumulated by normal (i.e. not rich) people in the process of puffing up US home values. Unlike the dot-com crash, a worst-case scenario in the housing market wipes out the finances of a huge block of US consumers. And without free-spending, US consumers you can kiss the market for most small internet companies goodbye.

The apocalypse doesn't have to come from within; the people who are worried about a "tech" bubble aren't paying attention.

also, with the value of the dollar plunging below even the canadian dollar, the US stock market prices in terms of euros, for example, haven't been climbing that much, iirc (might even be declining?). someone can probably point to a graph of US stock prices in euros, but it's interesting, as i recall.

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