Let's party like it's 1999

We should have known Web 2.0 would lead to Bubble 2.0

I enjoy going to the Fourth Estate Domain nights at Sydney's CBD Hotel. Sally and Mike put on an excellent and interesting night (even if the bar can be a bit slow). Their choice of guest is usually very interesting as well.

Martin Dalgleish from PBL was August's guest and it left me deeply disturbed.

He made the point that content is king in the "new" online world.

The problem I see is his idea of content seems to be restricted to reposting magazine articles and getting users to send in content ala flickr and "Australia's funniest home videos".

I'm not sure Martin gets it, changing his title to Director of New Media doesn't help. That's so 1990s.

We certainly did have a 1990s theme. A lot of the people looked like they stepped from the 98 and they were certainly talking like it.

If we needed any proof the dot com 2 bubble is on, an article in Forbes confirms it: "The Cheap Revolution is On!"

Cheap software, cheap hardware, cheap content, cheap, cheap, cheap.

The problem is that people have to make enough to live on. Make things too cheap and you'll only keep your Boxter for as long as naive investors will throw money at you.

A good indicator that things are getting silly is CNet's article about Super Cheap Computers Office Depot are going to sell an HP system for $198 US (including shipping).

The article points out the original dot com bust arguably started when manufacturers warned revenues were falling. So perhaps the seeds of the bust are already here.