Trouble in the House of the Web Builders

Looking for trouble in the B2B world? Check out the price action in the companies that build and design Web sites. These companies' stocks are all pretty much in disarray even as business remains great. Which raises the question about what happens to Scient (SCNT Quote), Viant (VIAN Quote), Sapient (SAPE Quote), Proxicom (PXCM Quote) and Razorfish (RAZF Quote) when business turns bad?

What's going on here? How do good companies with strong fundamentals get clobbered? I think it is pretty simple. The Street is discovering that these companies are basically consulting firms. Consulting firms, even the best consulting firms, don't get ridiculously high multiples because they are just a collection of people billing other collections of people for work.

Every one of these companies has to pay a fortune to hire new talent. Every one of these companies is bumping up against the other because all of the low-hanging fruit has been picked. A lot of the medium-height fruits have been picked, for that matter.

Both Matt "B2B" Jacobs and I are worried about these stocks. At a time when B2B is busting out all over, these stocks can't get out of their own way. ...