I’m curious… do you think there are any A-list bloggers who actually do understand social networks/media?

BTW, we should meet up sometime… I’m sure we’d have much to discuss.

I think we’re actually in the best possible situation: where the market is “climbing a wall of worry.”

The day when I no longer see “worried” experts (like you, and many others), when even most of them have thrown in the towel and admitted that the market just ain’t gonna quit, when I again see people who never made a stock market investment prior to 6 months ago being proclaimed “geniuses” … the day when application of standard stock market capitalization calculations says that “this company’s sales will have to grow by 30% for the next infinity years, for today’s market price to be a good deal…” (as was the case for SUNW, EMC, and others around January 2000)…

We’re not in a 2000-style bubble. We’re in the broader, slower moving wave that applies the new technology across the entire global economy in a slow-rising wave.

That’s my take on it, anyway!

And this gets to Eran’s point – but the reality is that people only have so much time and inclination to find good information. The people reading my blog might dig really deep to cut through the BS, but most people out there want their information in convenient, easily digestable chunks. And that’s what the Web 2.0 bloggers give – little microchunks of information that keep people interested and give them something to talk about.

Of course, when we start talking with bad information or a viewpoint colored by ineptness on behalf of the blogger, that bad information cycle begins and spirals. This happens all the time, and I’d wager that most of the time bloggers aren’t there to point out the problems and correct the misrepresentations like they did with Facebook feeds.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments…good stuff.

Close but not enough. What really makes the bubble a bubble is the Echo Chamber effect. A listers read A listers, link to A listers and will gladly repeat completely unconfirmed rumors as half fact after reading them on some other A lister’s blog. All you have to do is take a look at techmeme. Or ponder the thinking process behind Arrington’s thought process in this crunch notes post. It’s that self-reinforcing cycle that causes a bubble, as you can see with the facebook valuation rumor cycle (‘reputable sources say…’ meaning a blog quoting some other blog) or the rolling stone fluff piece.

Which trickles down to my other point, the one I keep yelling across the internet to anyone who will listen: most of the people writing about facebook (I use facebook because it is a more segregated demographic than even say, MySpace) do not understand the users. Social networking being about the users, this is a fairly dangerous set-up. I’m not saying everyone is way-off –they’re just not spot-on.

Before I invested in hypothetical social networking IPO xyz I’d want to talk to the users, because there is more to the dynamic than meets the eye–shifty undercurrents of sorts. I know this because I’m a teenager and I spend hour after hour day after day with people who use these products constantly. It’s even different if you ask my sister, three years younger, and her friends. And I’ll say it again: it’s worth asking our opinion.

Of course, it would be silly to peg financial decisions upon a narrow cross-section of a very fickle group of emotionally unstable young people. Perhaps moreso than just listening to Arrington. But it’s all about perspective.

Maybe a decentralized reuters -edited- by legitimate people could work nicely? Less digg and more slashdot. Except, professional. How cliche–I’ve no clues.