Bubble! Bubble! Bubble!

New Tulip Lands Ahoy! (Techdirt):

The final proof that a new internet bubble has arrived is the fact that we're back to explaining why a huge stock bump on the day of your IPO is bad. It means you got screwed out of a lot of money. ... [The china search engine pop is] nothing, though, compared to AllAbout.co.jp (the article calls it AllAbout.com, but that's a different site) -- apparently the Japanese version of About.com. It debuted today in Japan and promptly jumped 727%. To put in perspective just how ridiculous this is looking, the company raised a grand total of $17 million out of the IPO. That's not all that much, right? Thanks to the stock pop, though, the company is now valued at a whopping $1.24 billion. That could be okay if the company were rolling in cash, but it only had revenue of $20 million for the entire last year.

Only tangentially related, but worth keeping in mind, at least one blogs-are-the-future A-lister has a consulting deal with About.com. No secret, it's often-mentioned. But I think the implications of the potential payoffs are interesting.

Remember, when you hear "Markets Are Conversations" - there's no "u" in that phrase - but there is a "con".

Write those diaries, people! The IPO you bubble-up may be their own.

[And all of this is an obvious reason why I should stop wasting my time being a Z-lister, and work more in search]

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)