Online dating firm Spark files for $75 million IPO: "Spark Networks, operator of JDate.com and AmericanSingles.com, filed for an initial public offering Thursday in a bid to raise up to $75 million with underwriter Piper Jaffray."—MarketWatch Internet Industry News

Online dating firm files for IPO. 'Nuff said.

Double bubble oil and trouble: "How fitting that as just as Wall Street marks the peak of one of the greatest buying frenzies since the Dutch tulip craze this week that another bubble begins to boil."—MarketWatch

Nasdaq's 5-Year Anniversary: "Was it really only five years ago that the Nasdaq peaked at 5,048? To me it seems like a century ago, a more hopeful and happy, yet naive time. My world view has changed since then -- more due to the events of 9/11 and its repercussions than the tech bubble bursting. But how much has the perspective of investors changed since then? Quite a bit, a new study from Schwab finds."—Well Spent

NASDAQ 5K. Those were the days. I think I'm going to tear up.

SEC to issue "guidance" about options expensing soon: "The Securities and Exchange Commission will issue 'guidance' this month for companies that must comply with a requirement to deduct the cost of employee stock options from profits, SEC Chairman William Donaldson said Wednesday. High-technology companies in particular have opposed the rule, which has several models for valuing options. Donaldson did not give an exact date for an SEC announcement."—MarketPulse

Big money, no whammies! Big money, no whammies!

Slump wears on valley's spirit: "Five years after the dot-com bust, the valley is still haunted by the reminders of its recent past. The vacant offices. The relentless job cuts. The exodus of the unemployed. The bitter investors who lost billions. The exorbitant housing prices."—SiliconValley.com

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Hangovers go away, even really bad ones. Anyone remember Texas in the 1980's? It's like Robert Earl says, "The road goes on forever and the party never ends."

Guess the bubble players [Flickr]: "pkedrosky posted a photo:



Can you label these players from the dot-com bubble days?"—Paul Kedrosky (UCSD)

February short interest: "Internet stocks with highest short interest as % of float: OSTK (48%), TZOO (45%), NFLX (42%), PCLN (39%)."—The Internet Stock Blog

The Truth About Bubbles: "Among my Bubble Era Paraphernalia Collection is Sun trade show chachki with the trademarked 'We're the dot in .com' slogan on it. You could probably start a company with the money Sun spent on getting that trademark in the US and Europe alone. Was Sun stupid? No. Were the VCs that invested in bubble dot coms stupid? Some were but not most. Fact is, during a bubble, if you're in the industry that becomes the target -- entrepreneur, financier, consultant, analyst, journalist..."—AlwaysOn Network

Dotcom Echos: "I heard echoes of the dotcoms this week. Terms like click-through, impressions, stickiness, and friction were all tossed around the discussions about blogging and ad revenue. Ad placement, weight, and tracking eye movements were also discussed and for the first time ever I actually cited a Jakob Nielsen article to support my argument."—Blog Business Summit

The RSS Bubble is Here: "Splash! Fwoop! Znorf. It’s the sound of nextgen RSS plays parachuting into the Valley, Rte. 128, and everywhere there’s a broadband connection. Odeo, Brightcove, ourmedia, the Times–by this time next spring the forest will be thick with bees circling in search of unpolinated flowers. The RSS Bubble is here." —Steve Gillmor

Vonage to lead the IPO charge: "Business Week is reporting that Vonage will one of the handful of companies hitting the IPO markets in coming months. Several VCs say the company is going to hit the public markets sometime this year. Among others on the IPO dance card include TellMe Networks. TellMe is said to have $100 million in sales by end of this year and is already profitable. The company wants to do an IPO, but hasn’t set a date as yet. Other IPO contenders include Force 10 Networks, Peribit Networks, and Calix Networks. Force 10, apparently is going to do $50 million in sales this year, and will be profitable by the time 2006 rolls around. I have a sneaking suspicion, that most of these companies will file to go public, open the kimono long enough to get bought out."—Om Malik on Broadband

Bubble Burst Anniversary: "Folks I am planning to do a special edition to mark the bursting of the bubble, which is coming up soon. I have teamed up with Carl Haacke, the author of Frenzy (Read his interview) and we will be writing special op-eds, about 600 words on this site. The anniversary is on March 10, and we should be looking at next five years. I know there are a lot of you who have many things to say - so if you are interested in writing or will be publishing something on your site, do let me know."—Om Malik on Broadband

Two Signs of the Apocalypse: "Two related stories are floating around the Internet today. First, we have Mark Anson, chief investment officer at the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), warning conference attendees in Geneva that 'the booming U.S. private equity market could be heading for a crash as interest rates rise and hedge funds, desperately seeking higher returns, pour money into the sector,' Reuters says. "— BusinessWeek Deal Flow

Is Silicon Valley Back?: "Caution: This post contains no actual facts. But so far this week I've had at least four well-placed people tell me—with an uncharacteristic quiver of excitement in their voices—that Silicon Valley is back. Not on its way back. Right here, right now, it's back. Sure, people have been saying that since, oh, the day after the NASDAQ irrevocably tanked in April 2000. The big difference is that the people I've talked to this week actually seem to believe what they're saying." —Fast Company

VC survey shows increase in valuations in Q4 2004: "The change in share price of companies funded during 2004's fourth quarter compared with their prior financing round was up 36 percent, according to a survey of 101 technology and life science companies headquartered in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area. The survey was conducted by Fenwick & West LLP, of Mountain View, a law firm providing services to high technology and life science clients."—Silicon Valley Business Journal

Bubbles Precede Build Outs: "The net of all this - bubbles precede the buildout. And the buildout's clearly underway with mobile operators chasing revenue and value. With operators beginning to see a market driven by services and content, maybe there's irony in 3GSM and the Cannes Film Festival having shared a venue for so long. How much longer before a first run movie premieres on a handset?"—Jonathan Schwartz (Sun)

Acquisitions 2004: "We've been waiting for several years for growth at the top of the funnel in the number of tiny startups seeking seed funding. 2004 seems like a nice little turning point for the tiny startups who represent the heart and soul of Silicon Valley's innovation; hopefully this trend will continue into 2005 and 2006 as more would-be angels -- flush with cash from the Google IPO and recent acquisitions -- start to invest in more such tiny startups."—Adam Rifkin

Bubble 2.0 or Web 2.0?: "The early stage market may also be entering a 'furious investing cycle' but that's not being driven by the overhang from 1999/2000, its being driven by Web 2.0 and the realization that we have entered another wave of innovation around the Internet that will result in a lot of interesting companies being created, built, and sold over the next several years."—Fred Wilson (Flatiron)

What Carly Will Be Missing: "Get ready for a return to 1998 because soon you will be able to get funding for almost any hare-brained scheme. And while this process of throwing money at the wall is grossly inefficient, it inevitably leads to rapid change."—Robert X. Cringely

A New Venture Fund Bubble?: "These articles are becoming almost weekly, which implies that either there is another venture capital bubble—or that journalists are so bubble-fixated that they see them everywhere they look." —Paul Kedrosky

Mmmm. Fixated.

Google: $1 Trillion?: "Google will be a $1 trillion company, at least. Sure, shake your head. But what does $1 trillion really mean in terms of future stock price appreciation? About 16% annually for the next 20 years. Find that hard to believe? I don't. Microsoft has annualized around 35% per year since 1986, most of that growth coming in the earliest days. Outrageous positioning? You better believe it. Google is quite simply the most dominant company of the day. Their success and dominance is right here in front of our faces, and yet the popular media (and perhaps even some fellow Fools) are calling it overpriced or 'priced for perfection.'"—The Motley Fool

VC-backed companies see rebound in M&A market: "The market for venture-backed mergers and acquisitions experienced a rebound in 2004 after three years of decline, according to figures released Tuesday by Thomson Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association." —Silicon Valley Business Journal

$108 Million For Anti-Spyware Company?: "There must be more to this story, or we're witnessing yet another bubble forming."—Techdirt

Webroot latches on to $108 million in VC funding: "The antispyware-applications maker receives a whopping nine-figure round of funding--another sign of growing interest in security investments."—News.com

A cross-blog twofer: security and bubble. Nicely done.

Can you spell b-u-b-b-l-e?: "Three recent clues: * A $300 price target on Google. Sorry, nobody's perfect. Not even Larry and Sergey . * Last year, 11,399 homes in the Bay Area sold for at least $1 million, up 73% from 2003. Believe me, they aren't worth that much. * A company called Rocketpool.com thinks there's a business in facilitating office pools online. 'Nuff said ..."—The Tech Beat

It's Maybe a Bubble, but a Selective One: "'The good news here is that investors are certainly proving themselves more selective,' said David M. Garrity, an analyst at Caris & Company in New York. 'It's not like we're seeing Internet stocks go up wildly across the board. This isn't the 1990's when all a company had to do is put out a barrage of press releases and see the price go up.'" —The New York Times

Back to the Future: "I am blogging, emailing, and IMing all at the same time tonite. Just had a great email exchange with Jason Calcanis, who wrote, 'what year is it, 1999 or 2000?' It doesn't feel like 2000 yet, but it sure feels like 1998 and possibly even early 1999."—Fred Wilson (Flatiron)

Shorting Google: "According to my National Post column of a few weeks back, this is the time to short Google. The search company delivered earnings that beat analyst consensus by 10 cents, which is a lot, but not a-lot-a-lot, if you know what I mean. While I am still very fond of the company, it would surprise me very little to see the combination of post-release trading drift, nervousness about Microsoft's just-outta-beta search tool, and Google shares coming out of lockup, lead to weakness in Google stock for a spell."—Paul Kedrosky (UCSD)

Baidu: A Second Bite for Search IPOs: "Google is a minority owner of Baidu, the #2 search engine in China. Today the FT reported that it will seek a listing on the US market."—John Battelle

The Google halo effect is quite impressive. Even the company that makes their rack servers is going public. Amazing.

GOOG: A Billion Dollars Here, A Billion There: "Still writing, so I'll just note this, link to coverage, (here's Technorati on Google Earnings) and say: Holy shit. A billion dollar quarter (not including TAC - traffic acquisition costs - of about $378 million). Release in extended entry. And...in 2004, the company created a billion in net cash. Yow. How's the company doing in the markets? Check here. It's up nearly 12 points in after hours trading - in the first few minutes."—John Battelle