Transatlantic Cable: Sign of the times

A billboard, the Bay Bridge and shattered dreams...

Like thousands of people, I drive to work every morning over the Bay Bridge that connects Oakland to San Francisco. And like everybody else, I while away the time I spend in traffic jams by looking at the billboards that can be seen from the bridge. And one of these billboards tells a tale of the rise and fall of the internet economy in San Francisco, and Silicon Valley beyond. When I first moved to San Francisco in 1999 the billboard advertised the California lottery. A huge illuminated display showed how much the current jackpot stood at. But in early 2000, that changed. The billboard was taken over by the internet industry magazine The Industry Standard. Instead of showing how much a punter might make from winning the lottery, it showed headlines from the magazine's daily news service. To start with, it was all very good news. News of mergers, big IPOs and multi-million dollar deals that were convincing people that - despite warning signs - things were still going well and that the promise of the internet revolution was real. The billboard told people the good news: how the internet was expanding and people with a good idea could found a company, IPO it and make millions of dollars in just a few months. In fact, for many people, the billboard became a major source of news for what was going on in the industry. People learned about their companies merging, watched how they performed after going public. But towards the end of 2000, the headlines began to change. There were fewer big deals and acquisitions. Headlines started to talk about layoffs, mergers and Chapter 11s (a US law where a company is protected from its creditors while it tries to reorganise). Instead of sounding like the good times could never end, it began to sound like they might never come back. And this reflected the feeling of the times: people driving into their jobs at dot-coms in the South of Market area started to look at the billboard with more than a little fear. Would their company be listed as one of those scaling back or laying off people in a desperate attempt to stay alive? Would their share options make headlines, going from being worth millions to being worth nothing? In the end, The Industry Standard magazine itself started to feel the pinch, and early in 2001 the billboard went dark. No more headlines. The publishers claimed they were having problems with the controller that displayed the headlines and that they had reached the end of their 12-month contact for the billboard. But their own figures told another tale. According to the publishers' information bureau, advertising in new economy magazines as a whole has dropped by over 70 per cent since last year as previously big-spending dot-com advertisers turned frugal with their dwindling cash reserves. Or, worse still, they went bust. And now it has turned full circle. Once again the billboard is advertising the California lottery, with its promise of riches for one lucky person. A cynic might say that the chances of winning this pot of gold are better than those for winning the lottery of internet stocks.