The Business 2.0 Next Net 25

Thanks to Om Malik, Erick Schonfeld, and everyone else at Business 2.0 for both naming Bloglines one of the Next Net 25 companies, as well as for inviting me up for a roundtable discussion yesterday afternoon:

Unfortunately, I could only stay for about half of the discussion, but the part I was there for was interesting. There was much talk about whether we’re in a bubble again, and whether things are different this time or not. My 2C is that the whole ‘Web 2.0’ thing is just more of the same and while things may look different now, most of what we’re seeing is just a continuation of trends that started back in the 1990s. Cheap companies? Yep, ONElist got to 1M users before we took outside investment. Fast growth? Sure, remember Hotmail? User generated content built around communities? Yep, ONElist again (and several others). This is not a criticism, by any means. I’m extremely happy about all of these trends, obviously.

Anyways, thanks again to everyone involved. Why did I have to leave early? To meet with my cat sitter. Sigh, what a life I lead. Anyways, there are more pictures of the gathering up on Flickr.