Dot-com bubble 10 years old today

[HanleyS]

As they ignored the annual negative income in favour of the potential for capital gains during the boom, so, when the market turns far enough, they will ignore the annual positive income because they fear capital losses.

And that's when the value investors will earn their salt.

[ibis]

Anyone remember the cuecat? This effing thing summed up the madness:

CueCat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



They made MILLIONS of these boondoggles and sent them out free with computer magazines. As if anyone was going to swipe the bar codes in magazine ads instead of just entering the URL.

A madhouse.

I worked with a guy at the time, around 1998, who left to create his own startup dot com. Late 99, early 00 I was channel surfing ZdTV (a computer news TV station in the US). There pops up the fellow, spewing about his amazing new product: a desktop skin for Windows 98, that replaces the folders with 3d planets - each "planet" being identical in fuction to the folders.

Yeah, make Win 98 even slower by adding yet another layer of crap code on top of it - a graphical heavy interface at that.

Of course, that experiment in freaky went bust with the rest; they ended up trying to sell the awful domain name sometime in 2003.

No takers.

For me, two companies summed up the dot.bomb era - Pointcast and Rondomondo.

Pointcast sent streaming news and ads to your desktop or screensaver. The company at one point had a market cap bigger than GM, before people realised: (a) computers are not actually TVs; (b) networks couldn't take it; and (c) your screensaver is only on when you're not using your computer.

Rondomondo, on the other hand, never actually had any product whatsoever - not even a bad one. They were set up by Eircom in the apparent hope that if you got a load of young media/tech types and gave them nice offices, unlimited budgets, and coffee, something would happen, and money would be made. All that actually happened was that they redecorated a lot.

[trekkypj]

Mr. Market's violent moodswings certainly should help value investors, providing of course they do all their homework first.

After all, anyone can buy seemingly cheap shares but there's some work and thought needed to identify the dud shares and those merely being cheap because of market gloom.

The difference between the easy way and the hard way to make money is that the hard way is more likely to pay off long term.

[HanleyS]

The difference between the easy way and the hard way to make money is that the hard way is more likely to pay off long term.

Indeed, I'm sure there's probably value to be found in equities at the moment but it's a case of taking the time to properly research the options. The hard work would probably pay off in the long term though.

[jmcc]

For me, two companies summed up the dot.bomb era - Pointcast and Rondomondo.

And not Nua? (A company that went from being a good consultancy to a f*cked company (anyone remember that site?) that tried to jump on the high priced content management system bandwagon and got flattened.) And of course Adornis, the sooper dooper online jewelry company that launched and kept on getting referred to by the press release recyclers as Adonis.com. Unfortunately that particular site was a gay porn site.

Pointcast sent streaming news and ads to your desktop or screensaver.

Rupert Murdoch even offered to purchase them before the bubble burst.

Rondomondo, on the other hand, never actually had any product whatsoever - not even a bad one.

Well it had a pile of wegot*.com domains including wegotdrugs.com, wegotmadonna.com etc. Some of its people were talking about television over IP oblivious to the fact that Ireland then had a third world internet infrastructure run by fourth rate minds.

And then there were the "technology" journalists who would recycle press releases no matter how ridiculous and inaccurate they were. Even the Irish Times used to refer to ADSL as 'Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line' in an attempt to look smart. (It is Asymmetric rather than Asynchronous.)

Regards...jmcc

[ibis]

And not Nua? (A company that went from being a good consultancy to a f*cked company (anyone remember that site?) that tried to jump on the high priced content management system bandwagon and got flattened.)

Well, if you'd asked about people, I would have said Gerry McGovern. Pointcast was funnier, though.

And of course Adornis, the sooper dooper online jewelry company that launched and kept on getting referred to by the press release recyclers as Adonis.com. Unfortunately that particular site was a gay porn site.

Run by....Declan Ganley.

[toxic avenger]

Never a shortage of parasites looking to gamble their way to wealth rather than actually produce anything. And never a shortage of politicians to facilitate them. The dotcom bust should have induced a longish recession, but instead it was counteracted by the property bubble within about a year. And there'll be another catastrophic speculative bubble within 20 years, again accompanied by political and financial vermin explaining to us that 'this time it's different, this time we have really cured capitalism of its apparently inherent cyclicality'.

Anyone want to sell me shares in renewables? Timber? A wind farm? It's the ethical way to make money, you know...

[jmcc]

Never a shortage of parasites looking to gamble their way to wealth rather than actually produce anything.

And strangely, the movie "Wall Street" is currently showing on Sky 1.

Regards...jmcc

[toxic avenger]

And strangely, the movie "Wall Street" is currently showing on Sky 1.

Regards...jmcc

Unfortunately, way too many people watching thought Gekko was a template, not a warning. If only I had bought shares in braces after that film...

[ibis]

Never a shortage of parasites looking to gamble their way to wealth rather than actually produce anything. And never a shortage of politicians to facilitate them. The dotcom bust should have induced a longish recession, but instead it was counteracted by the property bubble within about a year. And there'll be another catastrophic speculative bubble within 20 years, again accompanied by political and financial vermin explaining to us that 'this time it's different, this time we have really cured capitalism of its apparently inherent cyclicality'.

Anyone want to sell me shares in renewables? Timber? A wind farm? It's the ethical way to make money, you know...

A renewables bubble isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. The dot.com bubble did play a part in widely disseminating the skills involved in the Net, as well as pushing it into businesses and making a big change to usability. It also left a lot of spare comms capacity, which may have led to cheaper broadband.

A renewables bubble would leave a good deal of spare renewable generation capacity after it burst, as well as ensuring that a good deal of money is thrown at every promising (and not so promising) idea. It would promote the necessary engineering skills in the Irish workforce, and probably force the grid utilities to take renewables on board seriously, making their integration with the main power grid easier.

Technology bubbles can be quite a good thing, apart from their financial consequences for those who bet on the wrong innovation. Property bubbles, on the other hand...