Tony announces a "blogozine"

My former partner Tony has announced that he's launching a new magazine built off the foundation of his web site, Always On. I share his optimism about the sector. Red Herring was successful for 8 years--and then it had two really tough years. But had Tony and I retained control (our real mistake) it would still be publishing today. Despite the Internet bubble hangover that many are still feeling there is a strong case to be made that we are actually in a boom that is BIGGER than the peak in 2000.

How do you measure Internet activity? Users? Time online? Households with broadband? Online commerce revenue? Online advertising revenue? ALL of these are greater than they were in the peak of 2000. The last one might shock some people: more advertising revenue was generated in the each of the last several quarters than at the height of the boom. I don't know about the sheer number of companies and employees in the Internet space, but I wouldn't be surprised if those numbers were higher too.

The one thing that is still down, of course, is the stock prices of Internet and tech companies. But those prices are still pretty good overall and Google is no slouch. And there continues to be a lot of VC out there to there so access to capital is not overly problematic.

It was a crazy time to do business at the peak of 2000--easy to get money but that was offset to an extent by how difficult it was to find great employees and the skyrocketing costs of things like office space. All in all, having watched this market closely since starting work on Red Herring in 1992 I don't think there's ever been a better time to start a company--and yes that goes for Internet companies too (which is why that's what I spend my days doing.) I think AO's blogozine and the re-launch of Red Herring are great for this market. Good luck!

An excerpt from Tony:

...in spite the Internet company stock blow-out, I firmly believe the original editorial premise behind both Upside and Red Herring was valid. Innovative companies still create the most jobs and wealth in the modern world, and media entrepreneurs can still build profitable franchises covering this dynamic market. But while AlwaysOn (AO) is still very much about the business of innovation, this is just part of the new story.