Welcome to "The dot-X Bubble"
If you haven't noticed, people have been investing in really frivolous things lately. If you didn't click that link, I'll just tell you, it goes to Justin Bieber's social network "Shots of Me". Essentially Instagram, but just for photos of yourself (better right?). For days on end, I could list the "companies" like this with no real product, whose entire existence hinges on the idea of the service being "cool", but according to consumers is not worth paying for.
The proof is in the pudding, but if you need any more proof, SnapChat raised a 50 million dollar series-C round alone, Selfie got at least half a million, and Shots Of Me has received at least a million from Bieber alone. Countless other startups have received a decent amount a change and then failed. The reason this failure rate is so high is because irresponsible investors are throwing money at things they don't understand, with the hopes of being Zuckerberg 2.0.
Why do I call it the dot-X bubble? Well
- It's a play on the early 2000's dot-com bubble
- If you haven't heard, anyone can now register a top level domain (domain_name.brian, domain_name.my-new-tld, etc.)
I guess what I'm trying to say is the ramifications of the dot-X bubble are pretty simple, and as more former startups hit their IPO, the more inflated and devastating the dot-X bubble will become. Because we are in this era where anyone can deploy the next billion dollar company with a minimal amount of coding experience and a few dollars for cloud hosting, we are going to see even more unsubstantial companies abusing the original purpose of the internet and digital computing.
I know I sound like a straightup cynic, but when we look at what computers are being used for now versus what they are capable of, it feels like we're packing yellow-cake uranium into glowsticks for people to dance with at discoteks.
The core of this apple is that if there is a lot of money invested into "social network limbo", investors will take the hardest hit when the s*** hits the fan, and it always does to some degree.