Last week, Internet billionaire Mark Cuban uttered the following Silicon Valley blasphemy: "The Internet is Dead and Boring… It has stopped evolving. Your Internet experience today is not much different than it was 5 years ago." This inspired scores of impassioned responses across the blogosphere.
Today, realizing exactly how off-the-mark his comments sounded, Cuban attempted a bit of damage control, saying, "I have a ton of Internet investments that you don't and won't know about." Ah, what a deliciously cryptic back-handed compliment to Web 2.0. It seems if Cuban really wanted to assure us that he still thinks the Net has value he might tell us what a few of those super-secret investments are.
Alas, Cuban's final comment essentially tells us what we knew all along--that since he cashed out long ago, the Internet is about as useful to him as Dirk Nowitzki in the first round of the NBA Play-Offs. Cuban said, "When everyone is looking for gold in the same river, the best opportunities are somewhere else." Here's another quote: When an entrepreneur justifies their interest, or lack thereof, in a market based primarily on cash and not personal passion, you shouldn't worry too much about whether or not they think that space is "dead."
Photo: kk+
