Why The Next Boom Will Start In Secret

from the of-course... dept

Michael Malone is lamenting the death of Red Herring, and points out that he's a little disturbed that he's written (unknowingly, of course) the final cover story for two techie business magazines in the last few months (he also wrote the final cover story for Forbes ASAP). He has a piece (though not a cover story) coming out in the next Wired, and he's wondering if that'll torpedo that magazine as well. Clearly, there were too many of these magazines out there - and, more importantly, they got swept along in the hype, way too much. So, it's no surprise that many people seem happy that these magazines have failed as well (just as they were when the overhyped dot coms themselves were failing). However, Malone is now worried that people will be taken by surprise by the next boom, because they don't read about it in a magazine. I think he's giving these magazines a little too much credit. First of all, if a boom is immediately called by a magazine, it's probably no boom at all (remember when both Wired and BusinessWeek had cover stories about how PointCast was going to destroy the web?). Also, the magazine format isn't necessarily the most useful format for discussing these things any more. It seems that most of the insight and trendspotting has moved from the techie-business magazines to the blog world.