The other night I attended a party thrown by AskJeeves, the search engine now known as Ask.com, courtesy of a friend who works there.

Will it all come crashing down?

I’m not sure why they were throwing a party, but it seems it coincides with a product rebranding (they got rid of Jeeves, rolled out some cool new functionalities like this map thing etc).

Anyway, I’ve seen a few articles about the “Bubble 2.0″, heralding the coming of another dot bomb era, etc etc. But didn’t really believe any of it. And this is in spite of GOOG. I started getting suspicious when I heard about all of these ridiculous valuations for things like Daily Candy and iVillage.

But not until last night did I get the gut feeling that we’re standing in a house of cards … again.

Maybe it was the storm troopers that were posed on stage next to a metallic cast of the Ask Jeeves character (for god knows what reason, for like hours and hours.) Or maybe it was the battle robots. It could have been the DJ, who managed to induce the perfect pitch of frenzy with his 20-second cuts of The White Stripes/Bon Jovi/SF dance music.

AND the booze was freely flowing. Guys outnumbered girls 10 to 1. Mardi gras beads and glow rings were everywhere.

It just all felt so San Francisco, 2000. And that’s why it was scary.

Damn.