the bubble in bubble debates

matt marshall continues to fuel the web 2.0 bubble debate. my take is that we hear about the bubble most from the new fraternity of web 2.0 cocktail circuit attendees while the rest of us have grown comfortable that this is business as usual. here's my comment on his blog post.

we need to differentiate between bubbles and saturated environments. THE bubble was characeterized by a public mania that fueled an irrationale pubic stock market and trickled back down through the system.

i would characterize the present environment as one of saturation which is not necessarily unhealthy. vc's are paid to place bets. entrepreneurs are paid to create betable plays. seems to me that everyone is doing their jobs right now. there have been plenty of periods with saturated bets and little results to show for it. remember the cd-rom 'bubble' of the early 90's or the famous case of too many disk drive wannabes in the late 80's?

what's changed is that the bar to create a bet is way lower and the bar to a bettor is now open to just about anyone so we're seeing a lot more entrants. i think that democratizes what's been a somewhat clubby industry for too long.