The original dot com collapse?

i can't offer much to what has been said, but i will offer this anecdote about the boom:

i was living in a major college city when citysearch came to town, with huge office space and everything (how dumb is that?). i had just finished college -- or perhaps it was finished with me -- and i had applied for a job as one of the content editors with citysearch. anyway, i didn't get the job, but they said i could freelance for them and write reviews and features on clubs, restaurants, etc.

i agreed, because i had nothing better to do, figuring they would pay like $50 bucks an entry. nope. $300 for an 8-10-inch review/mini-feature. and i could write however many i wanted, because they had to fill up their web site somehow! since i had lived in my town for like 10 years, i knew just about everywhere. so i would just write all day and night, and they would cut me FAT checks. it was unbelievable. like a neverending ATM. i could write whenever, get money whenever, work whenever.
it was the greatest six months of my life.

 

I believe some metro dailies originally had to have all-new content because their union contracts forbade the use of copy for anything but print, at least not unless reporters got paid a specific rate. Obviously, those terms were negotiated out as quickly as possible.

 

I wonder how much "negotiating" took place.

 

"We're taking this out, or at least half of the editorial staff will be laid off."

End of negotiations.

 

One thing we can all learn from the dot com bust is to only get investment advice from trusted professionals.

 

I can tell you how many people I know went into stupid dot com businesses. Golf lessons on line. Priceline competitors. Some good friends were about 2 weeks away from receiving about $25 million from a venture capital company for a business which could barely generate any profit under perfect conditions. They got hosed after a huge drop in NASDAQ.

 

I think they were my bosses.

 

If you ever see the book "Dot-con" on the shelf, grab it. It's paperback and it may be out of print... or you might be able to find it at a bargain-book store... but it's a superb re-telling of just how everyone's minds turned to grape nuts when it came to the internet.

 

And somehow the recent runup in home costs and the now "settling" of that great American asset seems to have stayed out of this conversation.

Where do you think a lot of that stupid money went after the dot.com bubble burst? Granted though, as long as you can make the payments you can at least live in the house.

Still -- and I've been saying it on here for a couple of years -- the day of reckoning in that sector is coming. Buckle up kids.

 

Oh, more on topic.

I'm at a dot.com now and life is great.

I was at a different dot.com before the bubble and after and it's still in business and doing OK. Key there? Hang on to cash after the IPO.

We had pizza and beer in the parking lot at our quarterly get-together, had good computers but not the best and my chair was no Aeron.

But it was still a glorious time.

 

"A Random Walk Down Wall Street" had a chapter about the Dutch Tulip Craze - it is a cogent explanation and it applies to the dot.com boom as well as stuff like Beanie Babies and other collectible fads.