Net Results Karlin LillingtonTwo things happened this week that made me think, "Oh, how the mighty have fallen." Not with schadenfreude, that Teutonic pleasure in others' misery. It's just that bits and pieces of the dotcom era have been crumbling down around us for a while now, and when I read about these two particular chunks of debris, it made me wonder what was left of that once sturdy edifice, The Boom.

The first of the fallen is Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) investment banker Frank Quattrone, once the firm's highest flier. Mr Quattrone was big, big, big in Silicon Valley, and then in New York. He worked for a succession of big investment banks; his name featured in all the Valley party gossip. He did the Netscape IPO, the most famous of the dotcom era.

Pretty much single-handedly, he made CSFB the fattest banking cat on Wall Street with his deft hand with technology company initial public offerings.

Well, that's what he did before the firm came under investigation for its IPO deals by the SEC and the National Association of Securities Dealers.

Over two years, there was to-ing, there was fro-ing. There were denials of wrongdoing, ever, at any time. Then last week, Mr Quattrone failed to show up before a regulatory panel that wanted to talk a bit more about those banking deals, and perhaps a bit about why he asked colleagues to destroy files before they headed off on their December holidays.

The firm began issuing ominous statements such as "CSFB's policy requires an employee's full co-operation with regulators" and then mentioned that dread phrase "appropriate action".

Mr Quattrone was also the target of two criminal investigations in New York.

The New York Times laid out some of the issues: "From his perch in Credit Suisse's office in Palo Alto, California, Mr Quattrone flouted the traditional barriers separating the disparate areas of the Wall Street firm. Nominally an investment banker in charge of bringing hot technology companies public, he also held sway over a captive research department, ensuring companies he took public received positive coverage, e-mails collected by prosecutors now show."

Tuesday, Mr Quattrone resigned from CSFB. He'll apparently work out his severance pay and share allocations once the charges against him have been resolved.

The second fallen entity is Red Herring magazine, which quietly announced it was shutting down this week, just as it was approaching its 10th anniversary. Red Herring rode precisely the rise and fall of the technology sector as the share darling of Wall Street.

Initially a slim publication written primarily for the venture capitalist and investment audience in Silicon Valley, it began to gain girth as the industry it covered took off in the mid-1990s. The magazine and companion website became the insider view of the Valley, and I became one of many journalists who scanned its online version regularly to see who was hot, and what new technology and technology company looked to be going incandescent.

At its height, it was bloated with advertising and even switched to bi-weekly publication, so many were the topics and companies to be covered, the ad revenue to haul in. Every issue featured a beaming chief executive who seemed to grow ever younger.

A big chief executive catch on the cover upped the advertisement haul - one issue featuring Bill Gates was so heavy that the postman wouldn't carry it to my house and instead left one of those small packet notices through my door.

Eventually I too got the call from the Herring. With all those pages to fill with copy - something, after all, had to surround the swarm of tech advertisements - they needed writers, even those based thousands of miles away in Europe. I did one story, was paid phenomenally well (enough to buy a decent laptop with the cheque - I nearly choked), and never got around to writing for them again, though they asked.

Not that all this was terribly flattering or ego-inflating. I was well aware that at the very height of the boom, they really needed writers who either knew something about business and could learn a bit about tech, or writers who knew something about tech and could fudge the business bit.

As a matter of fact, I've always thought one contribution to the development of the dotcom hypefest was all those business writers trying to cover technology they didn't understand, and all those tech writers fumbling their way through and adding some business spin.

This suspicion was confirmed when my cousin, a Japanese-speaking engineer who was a stellar vice-president of sales for a flurry of Valley tech companies, heard I was writing for Red Herring. "Wow, all the venture capitalists read that magazine!" he said appreciatively, waiting for me to drop my insider hints on what to buy, hold and sell. Moi? I think not.

In 2000, the Herring had 350 staff, and advertising revenue of $87 million. It closed this week without ever printing its 10th anniversary issue, with 31 staff, and advertising revenue of $15.6 million.

One person who did get that mix of business and technology was the magazine's co-founder, who bailed out in enough time to make some money off the magazine. He also co-wrote a book that investors ignored during the boom. Called The Internet Bubble: Inside the Overvalued World of High-Tech Stocks and What You Need To Know To Avoid the Coming Shakeout, it was published at the end of 1999, just before the crest. Prescient, or what?

Now he's got an interesting media net venture, called TheAlwaysOn Network (www.alwayson-network.com/). He's pulled in some big tech names as interviewees and participants in online discussions. Check it out.

Two different tales from the Valley and the Boom, and both show what's left of the dotcom edifice.

In one corner, someone sitting among lots of rubble. In another, someone using the rubble to build again.

Karlin's tech weblog:http://radio.weblogscom/0103966/