Heather Green has a timely article today wondering if we are in the middle of a great boom or heading towards another bust. It’s a great question, and one I have wondered about too as I see Gather getting crazy money and hear rumors of Digg getting bought for $30M.

Back in the nineties, I and many others, bought stock in companies that were going to change the world and make a ton of money in the process. Study the phrase “were going to” in that sentence. We ignored it at the time, but “were going to” is very different from “were.” Back then, nobody expected these companies to make money right away- we were in the middle of a tech revolution that was going to change the way things worked and create tons of revenue for every smart idea. Here’s a list of some companies that proved to us that a smart idea does not ensure profitability, or even survival: Exodus, 360Networks, JDS Uniphase, ICGE, Enron, VerticalNet, Wind River Systems, Portal Software- you get the picture.

The combination of too much money, the greater fool theory, a media frenzy over dot.coms and good old fashioned momentum chasing led millions of people into the tech fray. And millions of people got slaughtered when the gig was up. All because the investing world got too enamored with tech and stopped caring about investing fundamentals.

Are we in danger of the same thing today?

Hopefully not on anything approaching the same scale. But if enough of these startups with good ideas and bad balance sheets catch come of the crazy money out there looking for deals, we could start moving towards the cliff. There are two ways these good idea companies can hit a homerun: get bought by a Yahoo-equivalent (e.g., del.icio.us) or do an IPO and get bought by you and me. The Yahoos can take care of themselves. If we start hearing rumblings that some of these startups are going public, then I think we need to proceed with caution.

There’s something else I wonder about. If everyone is out there trying to hit that $30M homerun, will there be any money left over for a truly useful application or product that has reasonable prospects? In other words, is there money for a company that hits singles and doubles.

Our economy was built on singles and doubles, but these days it looks like everyone is swinging for the fences.

And that makes for bad baseball and bad investing.

Dennis Howlett is howling about how Tech Memeorandum is somehow hosing him and some other guys (literally if you buy his metaphor) by not somehow linking to enough stories “impacting business.” Then he proceeds to dump all over Scoble and Dave Winer over all sorts of perceived injustices.

He posts part of an email from Gabe Rivera, the creator of Memeorandum, that explains how Memeorandum’s algorithm selects what shows up on the page, and even says that Gabe manually added the allegedly excluded site to Memeorandum’s database. Yet somehow Memeorandum is not doing its job because their posts aren’t showing up.

I love Memeorandum. I read it daily. I’m no A-Lister, but my posts show up there regularly. It’s one of the very few places in the Blogosphere where new voices have a chance to be heard.

It’s not perfect. As I have mentioned before, sometimes my posts disappear there for days at a time only (so far at least) to reappear. I wrote Gabe about it a few weeks ago, and I got a similar response to the one posted by Dennis. Sure, I’d love to be assured that all of my applicable posts will show up on the Memeorandum page immediately, but that’s not how it was designed and that’s not the way it works. What we have is still way better than watching the pigs fly by our window while we wait for that link from Om or Mike.

Gabe was brilliant in several ways by leaving the selection process to the algorithm. First, it levels the playing field a little. You still need links, which a lot of the A-Listers won’t give- or at least won’t give to me. But that’s not Gabe’s fault. Additionally, it provides for a good answer when I, Dennis and others make inquiries.

Now about that business stuff. Right now there are 17 main stories on the Memeorandum page. All but 5 of them definitely concern businesses more than the consumer and the other 5 at have at least some relevance for business. Granted, Memeorandum’s not the online edition of the Wall Street Journal (ZZZZZ…), but that’s why so many people like it.

As everyone knows, I think the Blogosphere is somewhat of a closed society. But if we want to start pointing fingers about why that is, Memeorandum is not the place to start.

I’ve been thinking and posting about all these new Web 2.0 applications a lot lately. There’s no doubt that there are some great applications our there, most of them free, that can greatly enhance, simplify and organize our lives.

But here’s what starting to bug me: does anyone other than us know about them? Is Web 2.0 about everyone, or just the geeks (like me) who follow technology closely?

I can’t even get my friends and family to use Flickr, so how am I going to get them to use any of these things?

After I posted my mini-review of the best of the Web 2.0 applications, I asked some of my non-geek friends if they saw the post. Many of them said yes. But when I asked what they thought, they almost universally said that they didn’t really understand what all those programs did, and that they didn’t have the time (they meant inclination, but were being gentle) to try to figure it out.

There’s an obvious and substantial payoff to learning how to use Flickr. Our jobs require us to use email and Word. But the payoff for a lot of these Web 2.0 applications is more subtle, more remote. If Flickr is on the wrong side of the effort line, where does that leave these other applications?

So I wonder if the rest of the population really cares about Web 2.0? Is it enough that the technorati follows the development of these applications and eagerly uses them? I bet even the technorati’s use of many of these applications tapers off over time. I love to try out these new applications, but maybe one in ten becomes a part of my core application list (Flickr, Del.icio.us and Technorati being the big three so far).

Maybe over time all this stuff will be second nature to all the moms, dads, students and teachers. But we aren’t there yet (by a long shot) and it seems to me it will take some time to get there.

What does this mean for Web 2.0?

Will it change the world or is it just a passing fad of the technorati?

In this web 2.0 world?

Tom Morris (whose blog is one of the first things I read every morning) was talking earlier today about my mini-review of Web 2.0 applications. He made a good point about Netvibes and My Yahoo, saying there are really portals and not truly Web 2.0 applications.

Although I have only recently started talking about Web 2.0, having tried unsuccessfully to never use that phrase, I agree that Netvibes and My Yahoo are portals. And I agree that they are different from a lot of the other Web 2.0 applications we have been discussing.

Tom goes on to say, however, that he doesn’t understand why anyone would use Netvibes or My Yahoo. He prefers the greater scale and flexibility of an RSS reader.

While I get most of my information via RSS feeds, I still use two portals. I use The Home Place, my personal portal, and My Yahoo every day because they are better at aggregating the non-RSS stuff I want to see every day. My My Yahoo page has my stocks and mutual funds on one side, the weather and sports scores on the other and news headlines in the middle. Some of those headlines are old media- AP, Reuters, USA Today, etc. And some are new media- blogs and other converted RSS feeds.

The Home Place has links to web sites that I used to visit all the time (ESPN, some newspapers, etc.) and links to my websites for easy access. It has a Google search box (which is now largely unnecessary in light of the Google Toolbar) and some other search boxes.

I guess My Yahoo is my newspaper alternative and The Home Place is my bookmarks alternative. Clearly, my RSS feeds have rendered a lot of what’s on The Home Place unnecessary (for example, I now keep my blogroll at Bloglines). But my RSS feeds don’t really give me the same stuff my My Yahoo page does- at least not yet. Granted, I could set up RSS feeds for my stocks and for weather and for news, but I like the fact it’s all there on one handy screen.

So yes, they are portals, but I still need them. Or at least I think I do.

On a related Web 2.0 note, Virtual Karma has put together a complete list of Web 2.0 applications. It’s a great reference for what’s out there.

In one of the best and most useful posts I have read in a long time, Mercurytide has posted a white paper entitled A life online: living decentralised.

The Mercurytide paper is a virtual handbook for Web 2.0 software and services, providing a service by service summary of the most useful applications. The paper is a must read for anyone who uses or wants to use the internet to become more organized and efficient.

Here’s my brief take on the applications and services mentioned:

Netvibes is a service that allows you to make a custom, highly configurable internet home page. Not a blog, but an internet starting page where you can keep information, links, and data feeds that you use all the time. Sort of a turbo-powered My Yahoo page or a web-administered version of The Home Place, my internet portal.

I’ve used Netvibes a little, but it hasn’t displaced the combination of The Home Place and my highly customized My Yahoo page yet. Yet being perhaps the important word in that sentence.

Writely is a web based word processor. I’ve read about it, but I haven’t used it, so I can’t really comment on it other than to say it’s probably the leader in the clubhouse as far as online word processors go. But Microsoft and others are still on the course.

Gmail is the tendered choice for web based email. I use it and it’s a good choice, especially along with Firefox and the Gmail Manager extension. Yahoo and Microsoft have new versions of their web based email applications coming out soon. Yahoo won’t send me a beta test invitation, so I can’t comment on its new product, but the new version of Hotmail, called Windows Live Mail is pretty spiffy, particularly if you use Internet Explorer as your browser.

Delicious is clearly the bookmarking service winner. I and almost everyone I know in the tech world use it daily. While not an organization tool in the same way a lot of these applications are, I’d add Technorati to the list of must-use Web 2.0 services. If not for tagging, then certainly for finding relevant content via searching.

Num Sum, an online spreadsheet, is the one on the list I had not heard of. It calls itself the “social spreadsheet” and looks to be the spreadsheet counterpart to Writely.

Flickr is Mercurytide, my and everyone else’s hands down choice for photo management, storage and sharing. It’s more than just a place to keep your photos- it’s an entire community built around digital photography. And the posters, prints and photo books are pretty cool too.

Openomy is an online file storage service. You get 1 Gigabyte of storage and, according to Mercurytide, you can use RSS to integrate your stored files with Netvibes. I’ve heard of Openomy, but I haven’t used it. I definitely intend to check it out.

Backpack is an online organizer. It can be private or shared among multiple people (a family perhaps?). Steve Rubel likes it, so it must be a well done and useful application. I am going to try to get a Newsome family Backpack page started so I have some idea where I have to be and when. Most of the time I feel like a dog looking out the window: I’m happy to be along for the ride, but I have no idea where we’re going.

Bloglines is (after my very rocky start) an excellent online news reader. I use it. Good suggestions for my blogroll are welcome via Comments.

CalendarHub is an online calendar. I haven’t used it, but it looks pretty full featured. My hunch is that some of these scattered applications (like the word processor, spreadsheet, organizer and calendar) will ultimately consolidate, either via acquisition or via some as yet unknown new application.

These Web 2.0 applications and others like them are changing the way we connect and stay organized. If you’re looking for a handbook on what’s out there and how to use it, the Mercurytide article is the place to start.

Thanks to Thomas Hawk for the heads up on this great article.

I learned about Dpolls via a post at ProBlogger. It looks like a neat little service, though I don’t like to use iframes, which it relies on.

So what do you think about it:

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