Tech commentators and investors can't help wondering if we're in the middle of a new, soon-to-burst tech bubble. The evidence: We're seeing shockingly high valuations for Facebook ($85 billion), Twitter ($7.7 billion), Groupon ($25 billion), and Zynga ($10 billion); startups like Color are raising huge sums of venture capital; and Silicon Valley is on a "hiring binge." Is 2011 the new 1999?
Maybe. The gung-ho mindset is worrying: I'm astounded by how much money is flooding into Silicon Valley, says Thomas Weisel, who founded an investment bank that flourished in the first internet boom, as quoted by The New York Times. "The pools of capital... are far greater today than what you had in 2000." Indeed, says Roger McNamee, another investor quoted by the Times. There's a mistaken belief that "every social company will be as good as Facebook."
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