Web 2.0: Bubble or Not?

I wrote several times about Web 2.0, and how much it is like the .com boom some years ago, in certain aspects. The issue has been debated countless times, and past week it was featured on LA Times. But some people refuse to see this as a bubble/boom, tipical attitude from those in the field.

Notice that being in the web 2.0 world, if we're facing a bubble/boom, doesn't mean that everyone on that market will fail and suffer - it only means that many people are wasting time doing vapourware.

One article I was surprised to read about this was on Postbubble, since in their launch post they said:

We’ve seen adaptation, and now its time to see the survival of the fittest. What will happen to the ten different calendar apps out there? Which social networking sites will succeed and why? What other types of applications will collective intelligence and communication spawn? How will everything fit together and how are things changing us while we change them? These are just a few of the questions and ideas that make the Web 2.0 world exciting right now and we have yet to scratch the surface.

The bottom line is that things are changing fast, and people are changing with it. The freight train of Web 2.0 isn’t slowing down and it isn’t going in one direction. On Postbubble we plan to follow right next to it and see where it goes, who it picks up, and who it leaves behind. All aboard.

Isn't this the same as saying "we're here to tell you our thoughts about who'll survive to the bubble"? It is, at least in my interpretation, but now they seem to have changed their minds, because now they're saying that

Bubbles are financial problems caused by overinflated value and I don’t think this sector is quite there yet. It might get there, but I don’t think so because the public will still be too weary to let it happen and the VC’s will naturally be a bit more “conservative” in their investments. When it comes to bubble talk, I’m sinking the whole idea.

Man, sinking the whole idea? You're sinking PostBubble, then!

There’s VC money for sure, but even that isn’t out of hand according to the numbers. The first quarter of 2006 was only 12% up in VC investment since last year which doesn’t really make me think things are wildly out of hand.

What's "being out of hand", and which numbers are you reading to get to that conclusion? If you look at other numbers, like the number of simillar social networks trying to reach the same exact market with exactly the same pros and cons, you'll see that those are out of hand. Same happens to those so-called "start pages". How to define a bubble? Well, I would say you're facing one when "an idea is so attractive and the sight of easy success is such that people start doing stupid things hoping they get financed/bought". Or something like that. I've seen too many web2.0 apps appearing (even good ones, that I'm sad they aren't here anymore) for only one week or so, and then dying because the cost of maintaining it online wasn't supported unless it had imediate tremendous success - and they hadn't. IMHO, that happens when you're in a bubble. Yet, other thoughts on the issue are appreciated.