The way Internet retailers are crashing and burning these days is downright scary. Layoffs to the right of you, closings to the left. The first instinct is to write off the consumer market entirely. Instead, the emphasis needs to be on understanding what's unique about the companies in each of these markets. Just because money is moving to another industry doesn't mean that every company is going to be innovative.
Funding based on trends can blind investors.
It's simple to say that cookie-cutter business plans for the consumer market, essentially identical except for the details of a product or industry, are follies of the past. You don't have to look any further than the business exchanges to see how easy it is to fall into that trap. We'd like to think that the past two years of herd-mentality funding were an aberration. Greed and that crazy market made everyone do it with the B2C companies. Maybe, maybe not.