So, IPv4 exhaustion plays the role of Y2K in this bubble, yes?
Thank you for sharing the video. I’ve read about Netscape and it’s really cool to actually see all those people! I had somehow imagined them to be working in good office space (like Joel has)… Given the work environment it’s amazing they got as far as they did. Doing development that way is not maintainable at all.
Fast-talking the suits, earning truckloads of cash, bailing out early and retiring before I’m 30? Sounds like fun. I’m looking forward to the next bubble.
Great post, Jeff. I hadn’t heard of Code Rush and will look forward to checking it out. Another recent film along these lines that I thoroughly enjoyed was “We Live in Public”. It’s a great portrayal of one man’s success, paranoia, and ultimate failure working in the excess of the bubble.
You know, the thing about the bubbles that no one mentions is: There are people who create startups knowing they are crap, just so they can burn through investor money. I used to work for one of those guys. Their idea is: get through the code to make v1.0 so we can attract investors. Who cares if it works “right”, as long as it works “good enough” to attract investors…
My $0.02
“Facebook – the next Google and Microsoft rolled into one” - Your wrong there my friend. Microsoft and Google have their fingers in many more pies than Facebook.
Facebook doesn’t even have an O/S or a search engine, or a DB platform. The list goes on and on.
Facebook will always be a social platform that makes money off Ads, nothing more.
@Gustavo Martins - Dev jobs are a dime a dozen. I’ve got 3 open req’s on my team right now. Problem is there is still a lot of garbage floating out there. We see streams of resumes that say the right thing, but first interview (phone) is usually a disaster. I’ve lost a number of employees in the recent weeks as well because of hot jobs in the developer market.
@Vince - By the next google/microsoft rolled into one, I’m pretty sure he’s talking about the financial value. Both MS & Google have to make significant investment across hundreds of product lines to achieve the same revenue stream as Facebook without nearly the profit. Facebook has one primary product, and then the ancillary applications that support it. It’s whole business is to collect, dissect, and report data. Most of that data we all just volunteer! And it’s pretty much all marketing data.
Example. Picture the following status update.
“Just went to see Goodfellas with Mike Rowe, and George Carlin. Awesome movie! Better than Casino!”
What did you learn? 3 specific people liking a movie. I know their exact age, demographic, related interests, friends that I can cross reference and a myraids of information of my likes, dislikes, historical actions etc.
Facebook isn’t writing it’s own DB engine, which comes at a cost of billions of dollars (especially with the volume of data they have). You can pay 50+ - 150k/yr employees to build said engine. Or teach a couple marketing students how to connect to an OLAP cube and build some pivot tables in Excel for their senior project in their Marketing 491 class.
In the sense of ROI, Facebook has us all smoked.
Oh, and Joe Park of Kozmo wasn’t interested in building a long term company, he wanted to build enough to IPO, sell out, and move on. That’s it.
I knew that Netscape doomed from the moment I first time saw their code.
I still remember Frontpage 2000…I was scarred for a long time.