$20,000,000 – Party like it’s 1999

Oh, how I remember the days before the dot com bubble burst.

The stock market was soaring. Every college dropout would launch a “start up” from his garage. Investors would throw money around. Stock IPOs. Lavish parties.

Total euphoria, coast to coast.

Then Microsoft was told to split up its operations.

The stock market crashed.

The dot com’s shut down one after another, like dominoes stacked alongside a yellow brick road; no Wizard of Oz waited at its very end.

Roll forward to 2010.

Popular online social media / city guide amalgam Foursquare announced that they secured $20 million dollars in a series B investment round. In other words, money was thrown into the corporate pit in order to sustain the viability of the operations and its 27 or so employees.

What exactly is Foursquare providing the online community with – that’s the obvious question. The not so obvious one is, how do they plan to monetize this free service? Local ads? Special offerings and deals served in a platter of Monopoly “gaming”?

The ground is still shaking, ten plus years after the big dot com crash. The likes of Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare aren’t doing things any different than in 1999 – it’s the scale that differs: grander, more global but still without a realism and lacking substance.

I’d hate to see that $20,000,000 end up in thin air, or even worse, at a chapter 7 bankruptcy details. But those that don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it.

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Comments

8 Responses to “$20,000,000 – Party like it’s 1999”
  1. BullS says:

    Obama’s job creation program-more BS networking sites, more SEO-has anybody every built a better car that does not need to change oil? or a super duper self cleaning toilet?

    WTF—BullshitWebsites rules!!!

  2. Lucius "Guns" Fabrice says:

    LOL what does Obama have to do with private investors failing again to identify healthy enterprises?

  3. Troy says:

    I wish you would quit confusing me with all your posts. You will write a post this that is spot on, the type of thing that causes me to bookmark sites and come back later, then the next day you will write some post on a donkey in Columbia that started investing in .cn domains and was able buy his own diamond mine… =)=)=)

    It confuses me on whether or not I should ever come back… Awe shucks, it doesn’t really matter much to anyone but me anyway does it.

    Thanks for the good post.

    Troy

  4. Lucius "Guns" Fabrice says:

    Troy welcome back. The donkey in Columbia and .CN domains? Come on, the articles aren’t that off the chain 😀

    There is a rule of thumb to determine whether you like an article or not: visit and read every DomainGang post, then comment about it 😀

  5. BullS says:

    Every domainer who reads your blog will bang his/her head against the public toilet door because they know that they have bought some freaking xxx, eu,asia,net,org,info BS domains.

    What can I say–you always hit the nail right in the coffin–always right -too bad others just cannot handle the truth.

    You have crappy domains=BS websites=no money$$$
    what don’t you understand!!

  6. Lucius "Guns" Fabrice says:

    I didn’t order a ‘code red’, BullS 😀

  7. Troy says:

    “You have crappy domains=BS websites=no money$$$
    what don’t you understand!!”

    The only thing that I don’t understand is every single post and comment on every single blog that you have ever done Mr. BS=)

  8. mano says:

    What have been said about history repeating itself…..are true. But too what extent ?. Clear signs….BIDO, MYSPACE, FREINDSTER, and many more will follow the trail. Human are dynamic creature that need to be constantly get excited, or else they will get bored easily.

    Just grouping a BUNCH of people without getting their resources :- money or talent, which will eventually cost the failure of the whole group by it self. All those billions on the air will evaporated once people get bored or find something else more interesting or they realized there are a lot more important thing rather than virtual socializing.

    VIKING’S WILL DIE if they kept off from fighting.

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