Internet
Investment Opportunities
One big uncertainty seems to revolve around the future of the
software service companies that seemed to rule the world last
year while we were all worrying about the Millennium Bug. Many
have found themselves over-expanded and unable to cope with
the lower levels of demand now that the fateful date is safely
behind us, and the survivors are the ones that have gone into
consultancy and database development.
The big thing at the moment is Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) - the use of intelligent database systems to extract the
maximum marketing data from a company’s existing customer
records, and the ability to provide tailor-made, short-run solutions
based on the resulting findings.
Internet Investment Opportunities & IBM
IBM’s recent link-up with CRM specialist Siebel is
only the most visible of these trends. Another possible casualty
is one of the oldest companies in the sector - relatively speaking,
of course. Many analysts think that Yahoo!, the internet directory
that led the investor charge into dot.coms all those years ago,
is now getting past its best. With an estimated p/e of 90, the
old warhorse has been turning itself gradually into a kind of
news portal (an internet showcase for other media products and
services), and the cynics reckon that it’s too expensive
to be viable in this highly competitive end of the service market.
Besides, they say, the advertising revenues that these portal
sites depend on have plummeted recently as the dot.com companies
ditch their publicity budgets.
Internet Investment Opportunities - Capital Gain From Yahoo
Better, they say, to pocket your 4,000% capital gain from
Yahoo! (over the last five years) and invest it somewhere else.
Yahoo!’s share price has dropped by a third since the spring.
All of which leaves us more or less where we came in. Whoever
it was who said that constant change was here to stay could
perfectly well have been talking about high tech investment.
The rules are constantly being made up as we go along, and every
so often they get completely overthrown by some new development.
You can’t rely on anything these days. But then, perhaps
that’s just part of the fun.
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