Searcharazzi: Bubble About To Burst?

As fall settles in, another chill is in the air. Rumor has it that a top tier search and interactive services shop is about to have a management shake-up. M&A in the space appears to have slowed down as shops that should have taken their first offer decided to keep on trucking.

So what exactly is going on, folks? Bubble bursting? Or are we still very early in the game?

Valleywag suggests that lots of cheese varieties mean that the bubble is still growing.

An attendee at the EmTech conference reception Wednesday afternoon — okay, okay, my boss — noted that he hadn’t “seen that many kinds of cheese at a party since 2000.” Today the Financial Times observed that in 1998 the Federal Reserve was forced to cut rates because of credit issues and the biggest boom in history followed. So, is all this merely boom-times deja vu or a real indication of the state of the tech economy? All I’ll say is if you missed your chance to cash out the first time around, the cheese barometer says to act now, before the opportunities become a bit too well-aged.

While Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Reporter points to a coming burst in this commentary and timeline of events:

We continue to believe that we may be in the first stages of a cyclical downturn for advertising and the Internet sector–one that could affect not only start-ups and second-tier players but majors like Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), AOL, et al. Such downturns do not begin suddenly, and they are not instantly obvious (except in hindsight). Rather, as with the housing market, the environment changes gradually, over many months, with early signs slowly becoming a steady torrent of bad news.

Blodget does suggest that there is always the possibility that this is just a blip. What do you think, dear readers?