Earlier this week, I got some pushback on a post - Dot-Com Bust II - suggesting the Internet investment landscape was getting frothy. The point was that the excitement among investors (mostly private equity, for now) was edging towards exurberance. This thesis has only been bolstered in the past 48 hours with a flurry of VC deals: Facebook ($25-million), Healthia ($7-million), Veoh ($12.5-million), SimplyHired ($13.5-million) and Jingle Networks ($26-million). It's like there a wild party happening and no one wants to miss it even if you have to slip the bouncer a $20 bill to get in. Of course, there are people who adamantly believe the Internet market is healthy because many companies are being prudent with their money and the stock market has yet to see IPOs from opportunistic companies with little or no revenue and lots of red ink. But there is a new wave of private equity hittting the market - some of it going into markets where there's already plenty of competition and well-established players. Maybe it's just me; maybe the skeptic who saw the last dot-com boom come crashing down is still alive and well.
Update: For more on Facebook's financing and the social networking pheomena, check out BusinessWeek and Bambi Francisco.
Update II: CNNMoney.com's Adam Lashinsky has a story on the "smart way" to invest in the new "Net boom" - something Valleywag is happy to lampoon.