Yea! The new year is finally here, and I think Dick Clark actually survived it. Can you imagine what Ryan Seacrest must be thinking? "Oh just move on, Dick. It’s my turn now, dude!"

We’re happily kicking off a new decade, too. No one yet seems to know exactly what to call it, or even how to refer to the new year. Is it Twenty Ten or Two Thousand and Ten? I’ve just been referring to the new decade as the "Tens." I agree…who cares anyway?!

On a more important note, in the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about our business in the year ahead (it’s got to be better than the disastrous year the world just slogged through). I have also been looking back a bit to the momentous "0" decade (thank God it’s over). At the dawn of the "0’s" we launched THUNDER FACTORY, just as the Dot Com bubble was exploding in grand fashion. Remember WebVan, or Pets.com, or even Excite? Oh how the mighty tumbled back then.

But nothing compared to Boo.com. It emerged as the poster child for everything wrong and misguided about the first Internet revolution. I am sure you remember Boo.com. How could you ever forget it?

As I sat contemplating the year ahead I was fighting a nagging sense of Deja Vu…all over again. That’s when the ghost of Boo.com appeared on my screen.

I wondered: In this frothy new web and social media business environment, are we at risk of making the same mistakes of the infamous Boo.com?

Let’s recall some of the Boo.com details, lest we forget them: After several highly publicized delays, the Boo.com site was launched with huge fanfare in the autumn of ‘99. Conceived by three Swedes, Boo.com was supposed to sell branded clothing and other merchandise. But, the entire thing just did not work, nor did it have any real business model to speak of. Yep, that was the Dot Com way!

The whole marvelous mess came to a screeching halt in May 2000 when Boo.com went belly up. At that point, the company had blown through $135 million in venture capital IN JUST 18 MONTHS. Ouch. Double ouch!

Ah, the hard lessons of Boo.com. Those lessons were supposedly well learned and taught, and remembered. That was probably true in the first few years following the Dot Com implosion, those years when everyone was questioning whether, in fact, the Internet really did "change everything."

Then came Web 2.0, and the subsequent success of YouTube and its huge sale to Google. At about the same time, the social networking juggernaut known as Facebook started to shake the web landscape. Against this backdrop, the lessons of Boo.com seem to be fading fast. Do we even remember what those lessons are anymore?

I am not so sure. As I survey the current and constantly evolving web environment, particularly from the standpoint of my business, marketing, I am beginning to think we are indeed making some of those same Boo.com boo boos. For example, there is a dangerous amount of "me-tooism" out there right now, coming from established technology and media companies and start ups, alike.

Everyone is trying to become the next Facebook or Twitter, and they are sucking up a lot of entrepreneurial energy and angel funding (and even an increasing amount of VC capital) in the process. It is all social media this, social marketing that. The importance of having a truly differentiated value proposition that real people want, need and care about is starting to get lost in the undertow.

Consider the hyper-ventilating world of iPhone apps. That has become an industry unto itself, with nearly 100,000 apps now approved for the iPhone, and counting. But, how many apps can the average person use, no less need, in their everyday lives? Entrepreneurs, and also big brands, are creating these apps willy nilly because that is now the "thing to do." No matter that most of them are really not all that compelling to the people who are supposed to actually use them. Does all of this sound scarily familiar?

Don’t even get me started on the true value of Twitter!

Are we headed for another irrationally exuberant swan dive onto the jagged rocks of business reality? Is the desire for M&A riches and a resurgent IPO market dredging up the raw, unadulterated greed that poisoned the first Dot Com era and led to its demise?

Perhaps, on the first question. Even with that said, I believe there still is time to come to our senses and pull out of that death spiral.

Most definitely yes, on the second question. Greed is alive and well again and it is driving a lot of the action these days in the web sector (I see it everyday in Silicon Valley). Greed can be a good thing in capitalism, a strong motivator and engine for innovation and the capital needed to fuel it. However, it must be controlled and tempered by a deeper purpose and a commitment to something other than just personal gain. Not sure about you, but I am not seeing much tempering these days.

The lessons of Boo.com. As we embark on this new year of exciting new developments in technology and media, let’s not forget how we started the decade just gone. As they say, those that are no able or willing to remember their mistakes, are doomed to repeat them.

Happy New Year to all!

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