Golden Age of Silicon Valley Is Over With Facebook IPO 222
Hugh Pickens writes "Steve Blank, a professor at Berkeley and Stanford and serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, says that the the Facebook IPO is the beginning of the end for Silicon Valley as we know it. "Silicon Valley historically would invest in science, and technology, and, you know, actual silicon," says Blank. "If you were a good venture capitalist you could make $100 million." But there's a new pattern emerging created by two big ideas that will lead to the demise of Silicon Valley as we know it. The first is putting computer devices, mobile and tablet especially, in the hands of billions of people and the second is that we are moving all the social needs that we used to do face-to-face onto the computer and this trend has just begun. "If you think Facebook is the end, ask MySpace. Art, entertainment, everything you can imagine in life is moving to computers. Companies like Facebook for the first time can get total markets approaching the entire population." That's great for Facebook but it means Silicon Valley is screwed as a place for investing in advanced science. "If I have a choice of investing in a blockbuster cancer drug that will pay me nothing for ten years, at best, whereas social media will go big in two years, what do you think I'm going to pick?" concludes Blank. "The headline for me here is that Facebook's success has the unintended consequence of leading to the demise of Silicon Valley as a place where investors take big risks on advanced science and tech that helps the world. The golden age of Silicon valley is over and we're dancing on its grave.""
What Facebook IPO? (Score:5, Funny)
Morgan Stanley had to buy back all the stock to prevent it turning from Facebook into Faceplant. They'll have to sell it all over again.
Re:Facebook (Score:3, Funny)
What the heck is 'immersive amount of good'? Have you been hanging around people who use 'friend' as a verb too much lately?
Re:Facebook (Score:3, Funny)
The alternative to 'this email thing' is not picking up the phone or writing a letter. It's fucking doing stuff in the real world.
Also, only adolescents, and people immersed in the 'permanent adolescence culture' get all worked up about 'becoming like your parents.' It's a thing called growing up.
Remaining an immature twerp for your entire life isn't a viable alternative to growing up. Unless you're Dick Clark, I suppose (and even he got to die, eventually). Don't retard your development into adulthood in the name of a stupid meme pop culture embraces.