Mark Evans believes that the current interest in Web 2.0 is leading to Dot-Com Bust ll. While it is always popular from a journalistic perspective to predict the sky is falling, there are key differences to this Internet investment cycle upswing that makes some of us see blue skies. First of all, investors are smarter for having been burned once already and not enough time has passed for those decision-makers to have been replaced by younger, more naive analysts. Even if that proves not to be the case and the investment industry once again loses its collective mind in a kind of bloodlust of speculation, the Internet has changed. With the ubiquitous saturation of broadband in most major markets and increasing mobile Internet use, there are a number of sustainable financial models supporting the current investment trend.

For example, convergence - this time around - is real. The huge television market is being disintermediated by online content. That means the billions of dollars now being spent in the TV markets will migrate to companies like, say, Eisner's bet, Veoh (which, as I hinted at yesterday is surprisingly uninteresting from a technical perspective - surely we Canadians have more compelling products). Then there is the mobile world. In 2008 something like 500 million rich-media capable cell phones will be sold. Mobile gaming will be a serious market. Social networking and smart mobs are cultural phenomenon that have only begun to make an impression on the consumer landscape. More importantly, digital technology is a much larger part of today's business fabric.

That's why this Internet upsurge should not be discredited too soon. While there will be inevitable market swings this time there is a much more integrated base to fuel revenue in the sector.