dannyman.toldme.com

Tech Bubble Spotted

Remember pets.com? Back in the Dot Com Bubble, they had this awesome business plan to sell pet food … using the Internet! They had a Superbowl commercial, than they died like so many other startups when the Dot Com Bubble imploded on itself.

So, my Bubbledar pinged when I saw this headline this morning:

http://allthingsd.com/20120409/woof-rover-com-fetches-3-4-million-to-be-airbnb-for-dogs/

Yes! Peer-to-peer vacation homes! For pets!

And then, this thing dropped, and my Bubbledar is pinging louder:

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/09/breaking-facebook-buying-instagram-for-1-billion/

Yes! A billion dollars for an iPhone app that takes pictures that look like Polaroids. But you don’t just get the app, you get the iPhone users who have been uploading their photos to social networking sites, because that is a key demographic that Facebook has yet to crack!

A few years ago, Zuckerberg thought $500 million would be a lot of money to acquire Twitter. Fun story here:

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/16/138160765/twitter-co-founder-biz-stone-plays-not-my-job