News Blog

The first rule of building an active online community? Don't tell people they need to be active.

Helium.com, a hub for citizen journalists and writers, drew hundreds of heated--and sometimes snarky--comments from its membership over the weekend after the company said it wanted to change its payment system to reward the most active participants, and slough off the dead weight.

Helium pays a portion of its advertising revenue to people who write the most widely read stories on the site--popularity that is based on user reviews from members. But the company suggested that its new system would pay only those people who maintain a "single-star" rating on the site, which means that they wouldn't just write, but they also would need to review as many as 40 stories within 90 days, according to the company's original post. Anyone who fell below a single-star rating would not be paid for their stories.

While some Helium members liked the idea, others pooh-poohed it.

"Minimal requests, objectively fair, have a way of appearing onerous and even ominous when they turn into requirements," wrote one member, Ben Parris.

"No matter how much you tell about the difficulties and costs of running Helium, and no matter how true it may be, a citizen of a capitalist society will feel that you are asking them to subsidize your business," he added.

Parris ended his post by saying that he would likely return to writing stories for Helium after he finished his taxes the next day.

For more than a decade, Web site operators have enjoyed a broad legal shield against lawsuits filed over material posted by their users, which has let user-driven sites like YouTube and MySpace.com flourish.

But a pair of recent rulings by federal district judges have chipped away at that protective shield. If those decisions are upheld on appeal, and if more judges follow suit, Web site operators and Internet service providers may find themselves compelled to police what their users post--or face the unsettling prospect of being held liable for the contents.

"We fear these cases might inspire a wave of new lawsuits that, even if ultimately dismissed, will create a chilling effect," said Sophia Cope, an attorney for the Center for Democracy and Technology, which has filed briefs supporting broad immunity and gets some financial support from a number of prominent Internet companies. "Many small start-up Web services might find that the costs of defending such suits--in terms of time and legal fees--are too much to bear."

The legal shield comes from a portion of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which generally says Web sites aren't liable for their users' posts or other content they provide. That has immunized the dot-com industry from a wide range of civil lawsuits spanning everything from defamation to--in a case decided last year involving MySpace--lawsuits alleging that better child safety and age verification measures should have been put into place. (Individual "content providers" who post defamatory comments, upload inflammatory videos of their own creation, and the like, are still vulnerable to lawsuits.)

In early test cases such as Zeran v. AOL, courts have interpreted Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act to supply fairly broad immunity for Web hosts. That trend has largely continued in recent years, with judges finding, for example, that dating site Matchmaker.com was immune from a lawsuit involving an unknown prankster's phony profile impersonating actress Christianne Carafano, and that Craigslist wasn't responsible for allegedly discriminatory housing ads posted by users of the online classifieds site.

Perhaps ironically, the recent decisions that seem to be taking a narrower interpretation of Section 230 also stem from disputes over online dating and roommate matching.

'Bogus' FriendFinder profiles
The first of the two cases pits an anonymous New Hampshire woman against the FriendFinder Network, an operator of dating sites--some sexually explicit--including AdultFriendFinder.com and LesbianPersonals.com. Jane Doe accused FriendFinder of causing her various sorts of harm by allowing "bogus" sexually explicit profiles that could be "reasonably identified" as portraying herself to be published without her knowledge by someone else to its Web properties, as well as in snippets in FriendFinder advertisements on search engines and other third-party Web sites.

FriendFinder Network (screenshot shown here) was accused of allowing an unknown user to post a "bogus," sexually explicit profile of a New Hampshire woman on its online dating Web sites and in its ads.

A recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante in New Hampshire federal court on March 27 partially sided with FriendFinder, ruling against some of Jane Doe's claims against the company.

But LaPlante also differed from previous opinions in one important area. He refused to dismiss Jane Doe's argument that FriendFinder's republication of her profile invaded her "intellectual-property rights" under New Hampshire law. She claimed to be concerned about violations to her "right of publicity," which says an individual generally has the right to control how his name, image, and likeness is used commercially--and the court ruled that Doe's argument fell into the category of intellectual-property law.

That point is crucial because, when writing Section 230, Congress explicitly said its shield does not extend to lawsuits "pertaining to intellectual property." Until Judge LaPlante's order, courts had viewed that only as applying to federal claims mostly about copyrights and trademarks--and not state lawsuits over more amorphous publicity rights.

The reasons this could create headaches for Web publishers are twofold, said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. For one thing, laws governing "rights of publicity" are not uniform across the states, which means e-commerce companies would be forced to align their operations with the most restrictive state's law.

And unlike in copyright or trademark cases, where there are fairly well-established rules governing how Web sites are supposed to respond to such infractions posted by third parties, "we don't know what rules are; we have no good case law" on rights of publicity, Goldman added.

Others fear that the ruling could prompt legal mischief. For instance, courts have ruled in the past that Web publishers can be immunized for posts that tarnish someone's reputation--a practice typically covered by defamation laws. CDT's Cope said she's concerned the intellectual-property exception will "swallow the rule," inspiring other courts to allow plaintiffs to slip in defamation claims and others under the guise of "intellectual property" claims.

Judge LaPlante's ruling, however, is not the end of the case. The court can now hear evidence on whether to agree with Jane Doe's remaining allegations. Judges aren't exactly known for changing their minds, once they've made a decision. But Ira Rothken, the lead attorney defending FriendFinder in the case, said he believes any subsequent appeal to the 1st Circuit would result in a finding that state-level intellectual-property laws, too, are subject to the Section 230 exemption.

Roommates.com's matchmaking woes
The other Section 230 saga concerns a Web site called Roommates.com, which allows users to set up profiles and seek roommate matches in thousands of U.S. cities. One of the ways the site attempts to spark matches is through requiring members to complete questionnaires that stock their profiles with a number of personal details, including their gender, sexual orientation, and whether they have children, according to court documents.

Roommates.com found itself on the receiving end of a lawsuit, in part because it asks users to indicate the sexual orientation they're seeking in would-be roommates.

Those personal queries drew a lawsuit from the Fair Housing Councils of the San Fernando Valley and San Diego, which claimed they violated the federal Fair Housing Act and California state housing discrimination laws. A federal district sided with Roommates.com's argument that Section 230 immunized it from such claims, but a divided 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently disagreed, and that's why implications for other Web publishers could arise. (Here's a PDF of that 54-page opinion.)

The majority, led by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, ruled that Roommates was not covered by Section 230's shield because it helped "to develop unlawful content" through its requisite questionnaire, which featured preprogrammed drop-down menus containing various possible answers for the allegedly offending questions. The judges also said that because Roommates.com engineered its site in a way that allows site users to search for and sort roommate listings based on those criteria, it's an "information content provider," which, by law, isn't immune to Section 230.

"If such questions are unlawful when posed face-to-face or by telephone, they don't magically become lawful when asked electronically online," Kozinski wrote. "The Communications Decency Act was not meant to create a lawless no man's land on the Internet." (The CDA, the "antiporn" sections of which were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds, was included in the 1996 Telecommunications Act.)

By contrast, the same judges found that it was no problem for Roommates to ask users to write an open-ended summary of what they're seeking in a roommate, since that request was "neutral."

If that way of thinking is ultimately applied more broadly, the millions of Web sites that routinely use prompts and drop-down menus to solicit, publish, and sort information from their users could be forced to change their practices or face new legal liability, the three dissenting judges argued.

"The majority's unprecedented expansion of liability for Internet service providers threatens to chill the robust development of the Internet that Congress envisioned," Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the dissent. "Instead of the 'robust' immunity envisioned by Congress, interactive service providers are left scratching their heads and wondering where immunity ends and liability begins."

This case was closely watched, leading Amazon.com, Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and a number of news organizations to file briefs with the court in support of Roommates. They argued that a decision in favor of the fair-housing groups would choke innovative new Web services and stifle free speech in online forums--particularly the "sortable" user ratings and feedback at sites like eBay and Amazon.com, and "tagging" features at sites like YouTube and Flickr.

One attorney who analyzed the case said the majority's stance, which clearly took aim at business practices considered unfriendly to fair-housing laws, said the case may represent a narrowing of the law but could actually be good for Web site operators who value Section 230.

"Imagine, shall we say, a 'progressive' congressman standing up in Washington and saying, hey, with this Section 230 scheme, we give a license to Web site operators to run hate mills, build up bastions of bigotry, and sanctuaries for racism," Evan Brown, a Chicago-based attorney who focuses on Internet law, wrote in a recent blog post. "In short, a Roommates.com victory could have given a battalion's worth of ammunition--in the form of emotional, irrational, rhetoric--to Section 230's critics. Some in Congress would have called for its head."

John Battelle knows tech booms and busts. He's been at the forefront of them for nearly two decades.

In 1993, he co-founded Wired, a print magazine that set a standard in technology coverage and spawned popular sites like Hotbot and Suck in a move to build an online Condé Nast--before its time. (Condé Nast now owns Wired.) Then in 1998, he co-founded The Industry Standard, a clubby tech publication that grew much like the overvalued dot-coms it covered, and it eventually imploded with the pack.

John Battelle, founder, Federated Media Publishing

(Credit: Courtesy of John Battelle)

A longtime journalist, Battelle turned his attention to the zeitgeist in 2003: Google. He wrote a book on the thriving company called "The Search," published by Portfolio Hardcover in September 2005. (Disclosure: I did some research for Battelle's book.) He created his own popular blog about the search and media industry and used that as a research and publicity tool for the book. After the experience of building a blog community and with his business hat on, he launched the Web 2.0 conferences with O'Reilly and began germinating Federated Media Publishing, a back-end deal maker for a network of well-known and independent bloggers and Web sites.

Battelle and FM, which sells and serves ads for its publishing partners for a 50 percent to 60 percent cut of the ad revenue, is once again in the vanguard of what's hot on the Internet--so-called vertical advertising and publishing networks.

CNET News.com talked to Battelle recently about raising money, the state of online publishing, and the future of Google.

Q: Vertical ad networks like Glam Media are really popular right now. Investors love them. Why do you think that is?
Battelle: Because people don't understand them and they hope things that they don't understand will pan out.

That's not very smart.
Battelle: Well, I just think they are the kind of flavor of the month, but you have to get down to where do you add value to the marketer and where do you add value to the publisher.

I think that there is definitely more value in a vertical ad network than in a horizontal ad network. So you can say look, I've got these 400 sites and they are all women's interest. Advertisers are going to probably pay a little bit more for that. I just don't think at the end of the day you can get the brand awareness and brand engagement using algorithms, putting (Interactive Advertising Bureau) banners next to content. You can get part of the way there. To get all the way there you have to have the kind of ecosystem that was the magazine business at the height of its expression, where you can really get into that and do some cool things working with the publisher, like (the equivalent of) a two-page advertising spread online.

The industry is really good at direct response advertising online. The problem with vertical ad networks is that until you have engagement, integration, and proof of that consumer awareness, you are just going to keep devolving down to direct response pricing, which is sub $5 cost per thousand (CPM) for an ad.

We want it at the kinds of CPMs that supported the magazine and the cable industry, which is above $20, $30, $40, $50 cost per thousand. Advertisers will pay that once they feel like they're getting that value for it, and once the media is created that proves that value, and it's not just the publisher's job to create that media, it's the publishers working in partnership with the marketers and that what we try to do it with them.

Briefly describe how your business is different from other publishing/ad networks?
Battelle: Our goals are that the independent media driven by passionate individuals and groups of individuals is how we make our money. (We're) helping those folks make money, helping them have access to services and deals that they couldn't otherwise. By federating together with a lot of other like sites, they get better access to terms and deals from large companies like Google or Microsoft.

The core of that is that we work with a select group of really high-quality sites that are independent; and it's in our interest to help them stay that way. Particularly last year, everyone was running around talking about how cool the idea of a roll-up was: "We'll buy a bunch of these sites and stick them together and we've got the next big media company."

I'm not certain that that strategy doesn't kill the...goose that laid the golden egg. The reason that they're so successful is because they are independent. So we want to help them have access to the things they'd have if they were purchased by Viacom or Time or Condé Nast.

Word has it you're looking to raise money and you've hired Savvian to vet offers. Given that you're already profitable and don't need the cash, what do you plan to do with the money?
Battelle: Well, I can't say specifically what we might do with any money that we might raise, should we do a fund-raising round. But I think there are an awful lot of opportunities in this emerging field and it's just good to have access to capital to execute any reasonable ideas that we might have. It's a very quickly changing market and it needs financing. I mean individual sites need financing and we want to be a good partner for all of our sites.

What do you mean individual sites need financing? You want to fund some of the sites you represent?
Battelle: I'm not saying that we'll necessary do that. I'm saying that it might not be a bad idea to be ready, should that become something that those sites are looking to do. In a fast-evolving model, it pays to have a strong balance sheet.

There was a rumor of that $100 million buyout offer, did you turn that money down?
Battelle: Let me put it this way, we're a venture-backed company, and all venture-backed companies at the end of the day are interested in one way or another in reviewing any potential offers. I can't confirm or deny what's been written there, but I can say that whoever might end up owning a company will have to really believe in FM's business model, and really understand what to do with it next and pay a price that is fair to everybody, including our publishers who have a piece in that.

So, obviously if there were such a price tendered, not that I'm confirming it, the board and I must have believed there was more value to be found elsewhere. Hypothetically.

Traditionally you've been a publisher creating the content and now you've separated from that role and are supporting the content, and I'm wondering what that says about how you feel about the value of it?
Battelle: I believe even more than ever in the value and quality of content. What I think has changed is that the creation of content, and I'm using content very broadly here to include services as well as traditional approaches to content...but I think the creation of content has decoupled in the last five years. Decoupled from the media business--I mean Viacom, Time Inc, CNET, Wired, Condé Nast--and that decoupling means that talented producers of content, for the first time have access to distribution, tools of production, and the ability to actually execute and produce their own content without having to attach themselves to traditional media businesses.

This is a reasonably new development and the reason that folks are interested in doing this is because direct access to audiences is...it's easy to get stoned on that. It's really cool. It's a very different kind of relationship between author and audience than you have in standard distribution channels--cable television or newsstand distribution. The consumption of that kind of content is what I call conversational consumption, it's back and forth, it's participatory.

This new form definitely exists now and it exists independent of the traditional media business model. FM is basically an attempt to become that new ecosystem. What we found is 150 sites that we work with and these are people who want to be in charge of their own destiny.

It's that publishing partner, that media business partner that sort of re-couples with the content without controlling it or dictating it or owning the intellectual property, which is a much better deal than going to have to work for Viacom if you're the kind of person who wants to control your destiny and own your intellectual property. So it is a kind of new business model, but it borrows heavily from a lot of other business models: book publishing, travel agents, advertising Web networks.

As a journalist, it seems to me like it can get sticky when you're running your own Web site, acting as business development lead, marketing director and so on, and also reporting and developing content for your site. The traditional wall between editorial and advertising can fall down in that scenario. And that became a problem with one of Federated's conversational marketing campaigns with bloggers in your stable--in which Om Malik and Venturebeat were promoting Microsoft products in an ad and then pulled out. What's your thinking on maintaining those traditional editorial boundaries?
Battelle: I disagree that they were "promoting" products. They were not. They were answering a question that Microsoft posed. They did not write about Microsoft's products, they participated in a conversation, though some pointed out, and I agree, that there was a perception of what you suggested.

In any case, it's true, when journalists are running their own shop, these issues will come up, and Om decided that, on reflection, he should not have been part of that campaign. But we can't paint the entire world of conversational media with one bad example. The folks you mentioned have brought in business managers, and we all learned a lot from the example you cite.

I think if you call yourself a traditional journalist, you should maintain "traditional" boundaries. But there's a lot more to discuss about whether in "traditional" media companies those boundaries are any stronger than the trust and transparency one finds in a true dialogue with readers. Publishers exist to moderate the back and forth between commercial interests and a journalist's work. FM does the same, working with either journalists or their business managers. With conversational media, there's also a very strong reader element. The key is to maintain transparency. And to learn from when things go awry. It's early yet.

How do you think a publisher like The New York Times should respond to this new market?
By embracing it as they have. They have like 50 blogs now, and they bought About.com.

How healthy is the online advertising business from your perspective? Any signs of slowdown because of the economy?
Battelle: Not yet, from what we can see, but I wouldn't predict that we won't see signs. It's pretty rough out there right now!

Since you wrote your search book, are you surprised by how the landscape has changed, or not changed?
Battelle: Except that Google has sort of duped me and continued to completely dominate it. I thought that Microsoft would actually put up a more credible fight. But it was almost game over by the time that book came out and now the next challenge...is to create engaging media that works for brand advertisers. Google isn't in anyway setup to win that. I think Yahoo was in a much better position, but now it's wrapped around the axial of ad networks and thinking that that's where the answer is. But I understand that, because they have huge scale and so they can just increase their (ad pricing CPMs) from 65 cents to a buck, their margins go up by God knows how much, but enough to make everyone look like geniuses.

I don't think at the end of the day that's enough, you have to figure out this brand engagement and awareness thing. And you can't just do it by algorithmically matching banners and extra content. You've got to come up with something else. So the value that I hope we created with Federated Media.

Do you think Google is losing ground? The company really took a hit from recent ComScore numbers, which were eventually downplayed by the research firm.
Battelle: I think there is a high probability that next quarter's numbers or the quarter after will put the stock back on track. Google did some things that probably they knew they were going to take a near-term hit. I think the market is just waiting for good news and they'll be more than happy to bid Google right back up

I don't think they're loosing ground (but) the whole market might be slowing down. The real question around Google is what's the second act after search?

Where Google has a new nut to crack is in brand/display advertising and I think what they're starting to recognize is that in order to do that you need engaging media that is driven by communities. That is something that they have not been historically interested in, but I think they're starting to become quite interested in it because they realize that the brand advertising market, the top-end of the funnel so to speak--awareness creation, engagement, brand building--it is very, very large market. The vast majority of it is still being spent offline.

That is one answer, but there are others including office suite applications or telecommunications. They're boiling several oceans at once right here. Which one becomes the second act is anyone's guess, but branded advertising is certainly one of them and I think there are a lot of people at that company who are very smart, who understand branded advertising, who would love to see a suite of products and services from Google that could scale into that, but it would mean a shift in the DNA of the company and that's a great, great story actually. So I mean, a company that's 10 years old changing its DNA would be pretty interesting.

What kind of shift in its DNA are you talking about?
Battelle: Being a publisher. You've got to be a publisher if you want to be in the branded advertising space. You've got to act like a publisher and you've got to think like a publisher. And that's not what they're good at.

Editors' note, March 25, 2:10 PM PDT: Due to an editing error, when this story was initially published, a promo on the News.com home page inadvertently used a photo of John Battelle without attribution to the photographer, James Duncan Davidson. That photo no longer appears on the News.com site.

Microsoft on Friday announced that it has acquired Rapt, an advertising management software and services company.

Under the deal, whose terms were not disclosed, Rapt's software and services will be folded into Microsoft's Atlas Publisher Suite, which is part of its Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group.

Rapt's software and services are designed to aid online publishers with improving their ability to price, forecast and deliver ads. Microsoft plans to use Rapt's pricing analytics, inventory management, and business intelligence software on top of its Atlas ad-serving platform, thereby bolstering its presence among online publishers.

"With this acquisition, we are uniquely positioned to help publishers succeed on all fronts. Our end-to-end solutions will include work flow tools, ad package and delivery, turnkey distribution, content partnerships, and yield management and optimization," Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group, said in a statement.

In addition to Microsoft, Rapt's client list includes Yahoo--a prime buyout target of the Redmond giant. Maybe the software giant can ultimately double down on its advertising efforts.

Federated Media Publishing, which sells advertising for a network of online publishers, plans to raise between $20 million and $30 million in a second round of financing, according to a source familiar with the deal.

The funding would add to earlier investments in FM of an estimated $4.5 million from JPMorgan Partners, The New York Times, and the Omidyar Network, among others.

Last month, FM hired investment bank GCA Savvian Advisors to handle investment queries, according to a report from PaidContent. According to TechCrunch, FM turned down a $100 million buyout offer from one interested party last month.

John Battelle, founder and CEO of FM, confirmed that he hired Savvian, but would not comment on any details of a potential deal. "Who knows how this will play out?" Battelle said, adding that there was nothing new to report.

According to the source, FM was looking at term sheets from potential investors this week.

The amount that Federated will ultimately raise is a moving target, but the company is in an undisputed sweet spot of Internet growth and investment. So-called vertical advertising networks--companies that sell ads for a collection of Web sites targeted to audiences like women, sports fans, or kids--are popping up left and right. Some of the larger ad networks include Glam Media (women), GoFish (kids), and Sportgenic (sports). Even Ask.com, a veteran Web search site, is reorganizing itself to cater to search and advertising to women on the heels of this trend.

Some of these networks are commanding investors' attention. Glam Media, for example, recently raised almost $85 million--$64.6 million from investors led by Hubert Burda Media, and $20 million in debt financing. Glam, which plans to earn $100 million in revenue this year, has a reported valuation of about $500 million.

FM stands apart from rivals because it doesn't cater to one audience group, but many market segments, including technology, business, design, and women. FM's network of 150 sites represents professional authors of blogs, such as Boing Boing, along with high-trafficked sites like Digg. By recruiting higher-quality niche sites, FM can sell ads for a higher rate (in the range of $12 to $20 per thousand impressions) than standard banners (which can sell for as low as 50 cents), according to Battelle, who co-founded Wired and the Industry Standard.

In less than three years, FM is profitable, so it doesn't need to raise the money. Last September, it started issuing checks to its publishing partners worth a total of $1 million, thanks to the advertising revenue. But the company's no doubt looking to expand its network and improve its ad technology. In an economic downturn, the funds could also serve as a financial stabilizer.

FM, based in Sausalito, Calif., employs about 55 people.

(Credit: Acquia)

What do you do with 2,000,000 downloads and a 100% growth rate? With 240,000 members of your community and 900-plus developers (a number that doubled in 2007)?

You'd start Acquia, that's what you'd do. Or, at least, that's what North Bridge Venture Partners did, and the company looks to have a huge opportunity before it. I spent some time with Jeff Whatcott, vice president of Marketing at Acquia, to get more detail on the company and its launch of its products.

First off, however, I just had to know:

Does Acquia compete with Microsoft Sharepoint?

This is bigger than Sharepoint. Sharepoint is primarily behind-the-firewall collaboration. Drupal can be used for this, but Drupal's real sweet spot today is outside-the-firewall social publishing, or collaboration.

... Read more

Over the past couple of days, I've read a couple of great pieces about the digital delivery of written content.

Tim O'Reilly mines his own data and experiences to talk about the economics of e-books. Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 follows up with "The Future of Print Publishing and Paid Content," in which he considers what people are paying for or what they think they're paying for when they buy a newspaper:

For many people who paid for print publications, including newspapers, magazines, and books, a significant part of the value was in the distribution. That DOESN'T mean people don't value the content anymore. It means that the value of having it delivered to their doorstep every morning, or having it show up in their mailbox, or carrying it with them on a plane--in print--has CHANGED because of the availability of digital distribution as an alternative.

The problem for people who sell printed content is that the value of the distribution and the value of the content itself was always deeply intertwined--now it's separable.

People ARE willing to pay for certain digital content, but they AREN'T willing to pay for the distribution--specifically, not the analogue distribution premium.

I think he's spot on. In fact, I might go a little further.

We're largely talking subconscious mental math here, so I don't claim this to be an exact analysis. But I'm going to posit that most people act as if the following are true:

• Most of what you're paying for when you buy a printed book is the physical medium and its distribution.
• The cost of digital distribution is close to zero.

There's some truth in these generalizations, but my guess is that they're not as true as most people think.

There are these costs: marketing, editing, publisher profit, the money to cover everything that isn't a bestseller, etc. These things aren't distribution, but they really aren't content value either. So they tend to get lumped with "not content value" that doesn't need to get paid for in a digital world. However, much of it does need to get paid for.

At the same time, when I last looked, big server infrastructures didn't grow on trees and neither did the bandwidth and the people needed to make use of them.

Implicit assumptions that digital distribution is essentially free are commonplace. Those would be wrong. It may be cheaper depending upon the details of what type of content we're talking about exactly. (Video demands more infrastructure and bandwidth than books, for example.) But free? Nope.

Steven Levy's Newsweek cover story The Future of Reading was so unabashedly reverential toward the new Kindle reader that I had to check twice to make sure the article wasn't a paid product placement. Though the official product review only took up three-quarters of a page, there's no mistaking the impression that the seven-page spread is about Amazon's Kindle and its potential as the electronic device that will "leapfrog over previous attempts at e-readers and become the turning point in a transformation toward Book 2.0. That's shorthand for a revolution (already in progress) that will change the way readers read, writers writer, and publishers publish." Other devices such as the Sony Reader and One Laptop Per Child XO laptop receive very brief mentions.

You hear it in the halls of the Web 2.0 conferences. You taste it in the sushi at launch events. You feel it when you see the entertainment, bands like Third Eye Blind, hired to play at industry parties. The bubble is back.

And now, The New York Times offers up yet another example of prospective dot-com madness--the rumored return of The Industry Standard.

(Credit: IDG)

I worked at The Industry Standard for two years before it sank in the wake of the sector's irrational exuberance in 2001, along with other former rising stars like Flooz.com and Kosmo.com.

The Industry Standard, backed by tech publishing powerhouse IDG and started by Wired founder John Battelle, chronicled the rise of what it called "the Internet Economy." It became the fastest growing publication in the history of the U.S. and was known as much for its Friday happy-hour rooftop parties as for the classified pages-size tomes it produced.

Curious what Battelle would say to the notion of an Industry Standard revival, I e-mailed him. "I wish them well. And that's it," was all he replied. There was no love lost between him and IDG, which in the end pulled the plug on its most glamorous title in the face of huge financial losses.

Despite all the fizz in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, Wall Street isn't falling for the buzz, at least not yet. But, just like I don't look forward to a reprise of the dot-com hype and indulgence, I also know there couldn't be another Industry Standard, with all of its excitement and excess.

Maybe, like Nixon and his era, The Industry Standard should just stay dead.