PipStop

I was thumbing through an old issue of BusinessWeek (I just love keeping print copies of things - much to my wife's dismay), and it was just over two years ago (April 10, 2006) that pundits were saying Facebook could be valued at up to $750 million (Omigod, That Site Is Totally Hot). A year and a half later (Oct. 24, 2007) Microsoft bought a stake in Facebook for $240 million, valuing Facebook at $15 billion.

In the same BusinessWeek issue a video sharing upstart named YouTube was profiled (YouTube: Way Beyond Home Videos), describing the potential rewards and pitfalls of what it was doing at the time. Six months later (Oct. 9, 2006) Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion.

Facebook and YouTube are two of the most trafficked websites in the world. Where in the past it took companies decades to build multi-billion dollar market caps, in this day and age seemingly anything is possible.

So as I look at it, I don't get overly concerned about the "state" of the economy as much as everyone else wants to harp on all that's bad.