Many young web professionals and blogger, does not remember the time of Dot-com boom. I personally started with Internet marketing right after "dot-com boom" in 1999, just 2 years before the "dot-com bubble" burst.
Dot-Com Before and Now
Well, I don't think that there are many similarities with dot-com bubble in 2001 and right now. Mainly the problem at that time was related to stock dropping, due to fact that stock market around dot-com companies simply went deep into the ocean, there were insane investments before and now, probably the only similarity.
Nowadays a lot of money are going again through venture capitals, angel investments and crowdfunding into Internet business. Digits (yeah digits, there are not so many printed money and gold) are looking more like "international phone numbers" that to real money. Knowing how production economy is suffering and knowing how non-producing - "services" and "entertainment" businesses grow in comparison, make it easy to think that time for 2nd "dot-com boom" will produce "big bang".
Time and Reasons for Burst
The time is coming and most likely it will happen at the end of 2014 or beginning of 2015. There are many good reasons for this. Don't take my words literally this is just a personal opinion of online marketing veteran. The main reasons which I believe will cause the 2nd crash are:
False financial claims
Too many virtual currencies
Ridiculous investments on stock market
Too much fun and entertainment projects
Major problems with search engine algorithms
Very high maintenance expenses for leaders
Huge debt
Because it is the time
I checked with few colleagues, though nobody would like to make any predictions. Even an educated guess is close to impossible. Who will be next? Will the major players remain the same or they will sink first?
I suppose many of you will think that it will be good, if some of the leaders crash on the stock market, but certainly this isn't good at all, as this might trigger a lot of ripples in every market niche.
Eating "Angry Birds" or "BitCoin" certainly wont be fun, but there you go.