UPDATED: John Battelle on Web 2.0 and Open Companies

Instead we are witnessing the Web's second coming, and it's even got a name, "Web 2.0" – although exactly what that moniker stands for is the topic of debate in the technology industry. For most it signifies a new way of starting and running companies – with less capital, more focus on the customer and a far more open business model when it comes to working with others.

Read the rest at the NYT.

John offers a few comments on how openness is an advantage that we didn't have the first time around, in terms of open-source (free and libre) and open behaviour (working with others).

But mostly this is a good editorial on why we're not in a bubble. Of course, every time I read something like this, my mind invariably returns to the Wired cover story "The Long Boom." Which along with their "Push!" cover story, is remembered as one of their biggest mis-calls.

On the other hand, his main thesis is modest: we're seeing acquisitions instead of IPOs and thus the public "irrational exuberance" has less opportunity to run away with the market. Though I suppose you could argue that public money is over-funding Google (whose market cap is now over $71 billion dollars) who is in turn over-funding startups through acquisition.

UPDATE: Here's a brand new essay from Paul Graham in which he makes the exact same point.