I’m excited. I’ve been in the online business for a while now, I published my first site in 1994, and started doing it full time in 95 or 96. I worked through the dotcom boom for a few companies ranging from a failed startup through to helping manage a relaunch of MSN globally. It was a rush back then, no doubt about it.

But recently I’ve been feeling that excitement again - the excitement of big change, of endless possibilities, of opportunities unexplored. I truly believe we have only scratched the surface with the web, and there’s still ideas and opportunities out there that haven’t been dreamed of.

I see two big differences between what’s happening now and what happened in the dotcom boom.

First, there’s real money now. There are lots of profitable online businesses. Yes, there’s still some silly valuations going on, time will tell how silly they are. But importantly, people aren’t ignoring profits like they did back then. We know it’s possible to make money - big money - on the web.

Secondly, and slightly more controversially, a lot of the dotcom boom was driven by techies. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. There’s still some of that around. However, I’m seeing a lot of techies completely missing the point of all the changes that are going on at the moment. For example, slashdot had a discussion today on AjaxWrite , an Ajax powered online word processor which is allegedly Microsoft Word compatible. There were some valid comments there, and yes, Ajax Write does currently suck, but they were so busy focussing on the technology, why their DOM usage was poor, why they should have been using a Java applet, or whatever, that they missed the point entirely: AjaxWrite will improve and it will get to the point where it’s good enough for a lot of users. It’s a text book disruptive technology. The point is lots of techies are missing the point of Dotcom Boom 2.0, focussing too much on the technology and less on how the technology is enabling average users to do really cool stuff. And that’s exciting because it leaves so many more opportunities for those who can see on both sides of the fence.

Yes, it’s a great time to be in the online space, there are opportunities out there and if you are smart, and as with any startup (online or otherwise) a bit lucky, the money will follow. I’m looking forward to grabbing my piece of the pie, and seeing & helping others to grab their piece. Bring on dotcom boom 2.0.