There was a time when Steve Rubel was one of the most prolific bloggers around. Steve’s a stand-out (and straight-up) PR guy who works for Edelman, and I’ve always found him to be one of the most astute observers of contemporary media in a time of great change. Steve’s job got the best of him, and his blog posts have been few and far between, but he’s posted something today that I consider a “must read,” and one that bears further exploration.

The endless dot-com parties are back. So are the countless trade shows/conferences that regurgitate the same “new paradigms” the last 10 events did - with no end in sight. And yes, the ridiculous BS press releases are flying into my Gmail box. This is why I don’t speak at or attend very many Web 2.0 conferences anymore. I don’t have the heart for it. I would be stirring the big pot of Kool-Aid.

Let’s face it, we’re skunk drunk and it’s because of money. It’s almost like we all need to enter Betty Ford Clinic 2.0 together. This time, it’s not stock market money but private equity, M&A, VCs and to some degree the reckless abandonment of logic by some advertisers who are perpetuating what is sure to end badly when the economy turns. Hubris is back my friends.

Steve calls this a “somber time for the Web” and says it feels just like it did before the last web crash. He notes that start-ups are more into the exit strategy than the entrance strategy, unlike post-bubble sites like Flickr and del.icio.us.com who launched because they had something that genuinely added value to the web experience.

I completely support everything Steve says in this post, and I want to point to two specific items on which to comment.

Meanwhile, the sleeping giant many of us mocked - the big media - got with the program.

This is bigger than you might think, because despite mistakes along the way, the “old money” behind traditional media has awakened to the reality that is the Web, and they don’t invest the way Silicon Valley venture capitalists invest. Traditional media makes investments designed to produce a return, and while I’ve chided them (and will continue to do so) for not extending the runway on some projects, the truth is they are definitely in the game.

What this has done is to make valley start-up investments even more risky, because they don’t have the wide open playing field of the first bubble. Barry Diller can say that most media company executives don’t get it and probably be right, but I believe the ship has begun to turn. Start-up Web 2.0 applications are making pitches to be acquired by these companies, only to be met with a very real, “We can do that for ourselves.”

I have become less interested in every new shiny object and more engrossed in the social changes it, slowly, effects.

Exactly. This is the safe ground, the place where we all need to be focusing. When hype is everywhere you look, it’s always smart to go back to basics. This is why I base my observations on culture and culture change, because the impact of all this hype is a form of vertigo.

Sites like Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch are extremely valuable in helping me sort through the new glitz and glitter, but over the past year, even reading TechCrunch has become a significant burden due to the relentless bombardment of this new start-up and that one.

Steve’s right, folks. The economy is weak and 2009 is coming. When this bubble deflates, it may be even more unpleasant than the first.

(Side note: When I write of “Media 2.0,” I’m speaking much more of a business shift than one of technology, the playground of new competency development.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 8:18 am and is filed under Disruptions, Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.