Signs of recovery? Here be dragons, and alcohol

One blogger's take on how Twitter's error message could be turned into a microbrew.

(Credit: GorillaSushi.com)

Eric Schmidt, I blame you.

Right as you announce that you're holding your third-quarter earnings call from atop a treasure chest made of sustainably-harvested teak filled with $22 billion in gold doubloons (okay, so maybe I'm being a bit imaginative there), a smattering of prominent folks in the dot-com industry start coming out of the woodwork with ideas that would've sounded absolutely ludicrous a few months ago. Namely, they're getting into the booze business.

Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams are launching a wine label for charity, it was revealed on Thursday. Then, on Friday, AllThingsD's Kara Swisher posted the fruits of a discussion with former AOL exec and current Pilot Group venture capitalist Bob Pittman, whose latest venture is the $275-a-bottle Casa Dragones tequila. (We first reported on Pittman's tequila ambitions about a year and a half ago, but didn't have any further details.)

Have you seen the Twitter feed for Casa Dragones? It's awesome. "Sipping Casa Dragones with Alec Baldwin, Tory Burch, Andre Balazs, Bon Jovi and friends last night at East Hampton's Blue Parrot." Or, "Parthenon, new Acropolis museum, Cy Twombly's opening. Leaving Athens now after a night of sipping. Hot!"

One more entry in the space and this is officially an industry trend. Anybody else in the VC or entrepreneurship community want to fess up to launching a tangy new microbrew (Fail Whale Pale Ale?), a sleek new underground cocktail lounge (muddle those strawberries like you mean it!), or a high-end moonshine distillery nestled in the hills of Marin County? Or who're the real innovators readying their business plans for the chance that the Golden State opens the floodgates to marijuana?

Come on, you can tell me. I won't bite...but I might ask you to buy me a drink.

All joking aside, there have been some rather positive signs for the health of the industry, at least on the surface. There was Eric Schmidt's declaration this week of sunnier skies ahead (at least for Google). Facebook is rushing toward profitability faster than it expected. And next week, the annual Web 2.0 Summit rolls into San Francisco with its reliably impressive lineup of speakers: MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Intel CEO Paul Otellini, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, News Corp. digital chief Jon Miller, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. Some of their companies might not be in particularly terrific health right now, but I'm pretty sure they won't be talking about how much everything sucks.

Then you look at the party lineup. Microsoft has put together a Windows 7 launch party with a few edgy music acts on the bill. There's a start-up focused "After Dark" soiree at San Francisco's St. Regis Hotel (from the invitation: "Explore the streets of the ever-changing Web 2.0 landscape. Whether you cruise the strip or creep down the alleys of the Web metropolis, meet us after dark for a night to remember." Ooh, scandal!) And MySpace, hastily trying to counter sputtering traffic with an ongoing executive shakeup that may or may not turn out well, is throwing one of its "Secret Shows" concerts and some folks are hearing they've booked alt-rock gods (and "Rock Band" staples) Weezer.

The open bars are crawling back onto my Google Calendar. The Dow has inched back into the five figures. And the Valley elite's wacky, expensive side projects are starting to make their way into the headlines.

It's great to see the tech industry's entrepreneurial spirit carrying over into well, spirits. But are we really seeing an end to our long, cold "nuclear winter," as Valley mainstay Marc Andreessen so eloquently put it back in April 2008 --or have we just been deceived by the calm, numbing, bloodstream-warming sensation of expensive sipping tequila?

Whatever. See you at happy hour.

[bj1126]

It's still a war zone here in Florida. Unemployment hit 11% this month.

[lvcsslacker]

around 13% in nevada. Or maybe it's just vegas... I don't remember...

[cvaldes1831]

California's unemployment rate in September was 12.2%, down from 12.3% in August.

[RompStar_420]

I think it's on average about 10% everywhere, so this is not new. Where I work we just hired 2 new people and sales are improving quite a bit, so things are chaning. There are jobs, if you have skills.

If you can bearly us the comptuer and no basics, good luck!!! Educate your self or stop complainging, no body will hire a person with no skills, maybe in Canada.

[Lucky Bob]

"If you can bearly us the comptuer and no basics, good luck!!! Educate your self or stop complainging, no body will hire a person with no skills, maybe in Canada."

You mean "barely," not bearly. And "use" instead of "us." And "computer" instead of "comptuer." And "yourself" instead of "your self." And "complaining" instead of "complainging." And "nobody" instead of "no body." Oh, and "changing" rather than "chaning." Would some of those basic computer skills you speak of include spell check? Or do you have to buy a computer in Canada to get that feature...

[shitstack]

My office just hired five new people for a large account we won. I see business, at least startup tech business picking up big time.

[luke_marsh]

Be warned the Dow is not allowed much over 12800 until the world economy earns it the straight line market is the best.

[warrenrichards10]

From down here in Australia what?s happening in the USA is a painful thing, just remember you've got some friends left in the world (we call them "mates" same as "buddies" in American speak) ,I'm sorry to say the rest of the world see's America's money problems as self inflicted, and now the faint glimmers of recovery your governments reforms of the financial system (much lauded in the press before this slight recovery) seem to have disappeared into rhetoric and the eternal ?death by committee? or even worse , government by talkback radio (shudder).
As harsh as it is the Tec industry won?t start recovering until the world economy does, your nation gave the world many wonderful concepts ,ideas , culture (culture is a variable, quite frankly Jerry Lee Lewis and Kiss is just has quality as the London Philharmonic or Sir David Altenburg) but the America dream and capitalistic system that gave us the very world wide web and put a man on the moon and kicked seven shades of sh*t out of the Nazis? in WW2 may be seen as a failed hybrid ponzi scheme benefiting a few over the many in the name of profit (I?m not left wing , quite the opposite , I?m more of a conservative , some of us non American conservatives prefer a less ?gambling? type of a monetary system).
For the world to place the same level of trust in your finance system requires real reform , does anyone reading this truly believe your system really wants to enact deep , cutting finical reform?, I?m skeptical to say the least,\ (too many self interest groups will cut down/water down any true reform, and the world will move its banking to more regulated, controlled nations , I hope your nation pulls through , the worlds Tec industry NEEDS American creativity ,it?s innovative hot house atmosphere can never be copied anywhere in the world, good luck mate?s I hope it happens.

[moretroops]

We need to relax our post 911 travel restrictions if we want to maintain our status as innovators. A lot of the best "American" ideas are ideas brought here, by new Americans. We cannot lose that.

[panthecat]

When you realize our ?federal reserve? is an air vault full of imaginary money run by gamblers inn the banking business, it?s safe to say this disaster was self inflicted. The Founding Fathers of the Constitution warned us against a central bank like the fed, but since big business wanted it, we got it. They warned us about a lot of things, but did we listen? Hell no! I believe it was Stan Frieberg who took a copy of the Declaration of Independence, removed the title and tried to get people in Miami, Florida to sign it as a petition. Nobody signed it and they called him a commie pinko. Others have tried it in different locations with the same results. It appears Many Americans not only slept during Geography class, they also took a nap during American History class.

[custode]

Unemployment is what's known as a lagging indicator -- when an economy first starts to go down, employment initially holds steady for a couple months, and when it turns back around, employment continues to swoon for a few months. The increases in new business will slowly pull employment figures back up.

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