There’s quite a bit of buzz in the blogosphere that the NY Times is freeing up the content locked within its Times Select service.  This is great news and one more example of how content wants to be free.

And I think he’s wrong.  I will go further to say these are the signs that magazines like PC Magazine are losing their relevancy.

Dvorak asserts:

The current bubble, already called Bubble 2.0 to mock the Web 2.0
moniker, is harder to pin down insofar as a primary destructive theme
is concerned. A number of unique initiatives, however, are in play
here. Let’s look at a few of the top ideas floating the new bubble.

Neo-social networking. Today everything from YouTube to the
local church has a social-networking angle. And this doesn’t even
consider the actual social-networking sites, from MySpace to LinkedIn
to Facebook to even Second Life. This scene is totally out of control
and will contribute to the collapse for sure.

Video mania. With dozens and dozens of YouTube clones
cropping up to get on the "throw money away" bandwagon, you must sense
that the eventual shakeout in this space will have a negative impact.

User-generated content. This idea has been around since
Usenet and just keeps improving. It will make no contribution to the
overall collapse except for users reporting the collapse.

Mobile everything. Here is another concept that has been in
play since the mid-1990s. It cannot trigger a collapse since it will
never fully get off the ground, although the iPhone mania may be a bad
sign of something.

Ad-leveraged search. Most search engines will fail as a
matter of course. This segment of the industry is mundane. It would be
affected by a crash but not trigger one.

Widgets and toolbars. I cannot see the widget scene going
crazy, and the jury is still out on toolbars. But there is the
potential for nuttiness, I think. The problem here is that these things
tend to be dependent on the stability of operating systems and
browsers. One bad operating-system patch and suddenly nothing works.

He’s right that the above concepts have turned into buzzwords, and many businesses, led by service providers motivated by fees from new work, are spending money on these, and many will see negative returns on their investments.

But, bad business decisions does not make a bubble.  At worst, the above list will come and go as silly fads. 

What does make a bubble is equities trading at prices that can not be justified by traditional financial analysis.  That’s what happened in the dot-com bubble and the telecom bubble.

In the current internet scene, the stage where a new business needs large amounts of capital has shifted.  It’s much cheaper to start a company, so capital is required to really accelerate growth.  Which means that the sources of capital have better filters and liquidity requirements for investors are not as urgent.  As a result, you see much fewer companies raising public money.  Fred Wilson had a couple of good pieces on this a while back.

When the capital comes from private sources, it’s really difficult to call a bubble.

Again, in the worst case scenario, this so-called bubble’s worst effect will be a few low-return funds.

UPDATE: Fred chimes in on this article, as well.

David Beisel has a succinct post on seven trends he has identified as start-up opportunities.

1. The digitalization of transportation experience.
2. Internet’s facilitation of green lifestyle.
3. Influence and word-of-mouth marketing facilitated by online social software.
4. Fundamental shift demographics of internet usage.
5. Mobile consumption of information.
6. Wide proliferation of video.
7. Digital information becoming increasingly personalized with greater user control and choice.

While most of these trends can be identified as being universal with the internet, some are more relevant to the entrepreneur outside the U.S.  Trend number 5, mobile consumption of information is where the international entrepreneur is actually ahead of her American counterpart, and trend #2 is probably not going to be so relevant outside the U.S. for a while.

However, the rest of the list is very important, relevant and worth some thinking by the international entrepreneur.  And among those, I think the most critical is the shift in demographics.  We are now feeling that same shift very emphatically in Turkey, and I bet that it will form the basis for the next generation successful internet businesses here.

I have been emphasizing my belief that Facebook is distinct from other social networking services in that its DNA is that of a technology company.  In contrast, MySpace has always been a media company (now owned by a larger media company).

Facebook’s acquisition of Parakey confirms this belief.

WSJ reports (via Paul) that the owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com domains just got sold to Answers.com for $100m.

The number is large enough to assure me that much analysis has gotten into it and that this is  not purely speculative.  It also makes me suspect that not enough players are doing that and it leaves the internet traffic market less efficient than it should be.

I wonder if securitization of domain name sets could be in the future.

MySpace passed the 100 million users mark almost a year ago.  Facebook has about 25 million users.

MySpace is ranked sixth in highest traffic websites.  Facebook is the 11th.

MySpace has had a homerun exit.  Facebook remains private and independent.

I would not trade Facebook for two MySpaces.

The reason?  They are a technology company making an infrastructure move.  MySpace is a media company.

And Facebook is kicking MySpace’s ass.

FT reports that MySpace will follow Facebook’s lead in developing sophisticated APIs and let developers launch apps on MySpace.

MySpace is likely to change its technology strategy to allow other
online companies to “plug” their web services directly into its social
networking site…
…
The expected change in approach is a reaction to the success of rival
Facebook, which last month unveiled a similar step to open its network
to outside developers.

There are now over 65 million apps activated on Facebook; about 2.5 per user.  My bet is that MySpace’s comparable platform will not be nearly as effective.  Because MySpace is a media company.

I’ll join the choir:  Marc Andreessen’s been blogging at an incredible pace and seems to knock out one stellar post after the other.  His newest is the first part of a series on his thoughts about startups.

It’s well worth a read for anyone running or thinking about starting a technology venture.