Jason Calacanis, the mop-haired founder of Mahalo, an overfunded Web directory, is musing on Twitter about "tickers and rallies past" — a Proustian substitution of stock markets for madeleines. But what, exactly, does he have to be nostalgic for?
If there is a Web 2.0 bubble, it is surely in microblogging, a field popularized by Twitter.. Countless startups are thriving on the myth that sharing yourself online is too hard. Pownce cofounder Leah Culver graces the cover of MIT's alumni magazine. San Francisco's most self-involved Webheads can't stop gabbing…
CollegeHumor cofounder Ricky Van Veen has decided to short the word "douche."
Most venture capitalists are adept followers of the herd. As such, their investments are best seen as trailing indicators — the financial detritus of events past, rather than predictors of what to come. Is there a bubble in Web startups? The numbers themselves are as confused as investors. Dow Jones says the first…
Attention, Valley of the Heart's Delight: There's bad news in theNew York Times. The bullet points:
Are we in a bubble? Far too late to be asking that question, says Chris Nolan, a former Valley newspaper gossip who now runs a startup, Spot-On. She weighs in on the current market crisis and its effects on the tech business. Her thesis: New regulations will on investment banks will bring an end to the tech-stock…
SuperPoke is worth $13 million according to Facebook application tracker Adonomics. The site awards applications like Slide's Top Friends and RockYou's SuperWall values in the tens of millions of dollars — which provides some of the basis for the 9-digit figures that Slide has commanded, and RockYou hopes to get, in…
Fortune magazine, ever servile, provides a ready platform for the powerful with something to say. The latest on stage: Jim Breyer, the Accel Partners VC with a seat on Facebook's board. Breyer has a fair point: We may be seeing the cyclical bursting of another Silicon Valley bubble. Breyer says this happens once…
"There is no bubble in technology," said Facebook board member Peter Thiel in December. Tell that to investors who bought into VMware's IPO. [VMW]
Eight years ago today, on March 10, 2000, the Nasdaq closed at 5,048.62, an all-time high. Then the bubble burst, Marketwatch notes. By October 2002, the Nasdaq was down to 1,114.11, a 78 percent drop in less than three painful years. In fact, we're still not over it. Check out the chart. The Nasdaq today stands 56…
Behold the best tech ad in Super Bowl history: Apple's "1984" ad, which cost $1.6 million to make and run, and only aired nationally once. The following nine ads, while perhaps not as iconic, are all fascinating in how they seek to make the mysteries of tech compelling to the masses.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke made a couple of moves to infuse banks with more cash before the market opened this morning. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bernanke said the Fed would hold auctions to provide funds to banks and establish foreign exchange swap lines with other central banks. The idea was to loosen…
Wall Street analysts and Sand Hill Road's moneymen have pitched tech stocks as a safe haven amidst the credit crisis. Perhaps not. While tech spending continues to outpace inflation, which is running around 2.1 percent, growth may have peaked this year at 6.9 percent. Next year may see growth fall by a percentage…
About $40 billion will go into venture capital this year and recently IPO'd stocks are up 20 percent since June. But Paul Wick of J&W Seligman, which the Financial Times calls "one of the biggest specialist tech mutual fund investors," still isn't happy about the big, special tech market. He told an audience at…
Startup investor Peter Thiel warns CNBC's Maria Bartiromo that the current economic situation is dire. Inflation, economic bubble, deflation, blah, blah, blah. But unsurprisingly, the former PayPal CEO turned venture capitalist sees one bright spot: Facebook, the social network where, uncoincidentally, he's a board…
Since we first covered an eBay auction for a Facebook application on September 27 when Michael Zhang auctioned off LogBook for $2,550, the going price for useless applications has boomed nearly 280 percent, to judge by a similar sale yesterday. Then again, the I Am Hungry application sold for an even bubblier $20,100
The irrational exuberance of Pets.com, which burned through $50 million in venture capital in nine short months, will no doubt be told as a cautionary tale to our children around the campfire. What other investments are scary enough to give venture capitalists nightmares? Venture Beat has helpfully condensed Inside…
ComScore reports that October 2007 retail e-commerce increased 19 percent over the same month in 2006. Sounds healthy, until you look at the year-to-date numbers through September, which had 2007 on track for 21 percent growth. October sales are usually a leading indicator for how e-commerce fares during the…
If you bought some Apple stock yesterday after its five-day, 20-percent drop, you've made out quite well. AAPL is up 11 percent today — lifting the rest of Nasdaq up with it.
