I am sure many readers know of Kurt Andersen. Kurt has been around the publishing world for many years and has edited or written for several significant magazines such as NEW YORK. Kurt even took a whirl at being an Internet pioneer at the turn of the century and burned through $30 million. I also tangled online with Kurt in 2001 in a barrage of online comments.

This brings me to Kurt's interesting essay in a recent issue of NEW YORK magazine comparing Internet investing of the '00s to the late '90s. I suggest you all read this article. I too have questioned the real value of many of the social network sites that are in vogue.

I believe that a very few of the social networks will turn out to be valuable. This is is similar to what happened with the early search engine players of the '90s. Excite, Infoseek, AltaVista and a few others are dead or barely limping along with only Yahoo surviving with great strength. Many bankers and media companies threw millions at the search space, but only one of the pioneer search companies survived (along with Ask.com). This too will happen with most of the social networks. We are in the early innings of social network investing. In 3-5 years time only a handful will be economically successful.