Jeff Dachis re-emerges as Mr. Web 2.0

Like a bad penny, you know Jeff Dachis is always going to turn up somewhere, so, you may have read, that the former Razorfish chief has secured as much as $50 million (or as his press release put it, $50 Million), to start a social networking consultancy. In fairness to Jeff, he did have a good idea or two back in the day, but I'm a little unclear as to what qualifies him to run a big Web 2.0 company. There are similarities between the old Web and this new one, but to an extent it's a different sensibility, and there's no evidence that those who succeeded at the former will succeed at the latter. Of course, the one post I saw about Dachis' venture (on Gawker, natch), makes much of Razorfish's descent into a dot-bomb, but in that, the company was hardly alone. Still, if you have a strong acquaintance with the facts, you have to marvel at some of the detail in the press release. Not that what's said there isn't true exactly, but on the other hand ... For instance, there's this roundabout reference to Avenue A/Razorfish's acquisition by Microsoft: "Continuing its growth, although Dachis left the company in 2001, Avenue A | Razorfish now part of aQuantive, was recently sold to Microsoft for $6 Billion in May 2007." True enough, but how much of that price tag was attributable to Razorfish? Not much, I'd venture—no funding pun intended! It was mostly about Atlas. And then there's the references to where he's been quoted, including CBS' 60 Minutes, which neglects to mention that the interview with Dachis was one of the most infamous of the dot-com era. But, hell, maybe I'm just pissed off. I talk a good game too, and I don't get paid nothin' for this stinkin' blog.