A bubble, the question of what exactly is behind the big money and the hype is legitimate and interesting. Is it true that no new fundamental infrastructure is being created at the moment? Is there actually investment in a 'technological legacy' that can also be of great economic value in the future? Or is the money only used to smoke the servers of companies that actually add little?
A new infrastructure
I think that infrastructure is being built, albeit in the form of something less tangible than PCs or cables in the ground, but in the form of data. In addition, and linked to that, we are indeed seeing the rise of a physical infrastructure with 'The Internet of Things'.
Data as infrastructure
If you look at the portfolios of large technology investors such as Andreessen-Horowitz brother cell phone list or The Founders Fund of Peter Thiel (PayPall) and Sean Parker (Napster and Facebook), among others, it is not only the Groupons and social media companies that are being invested in. A second category of companies that they invest in is involved in software analysis and capturing, taming and making usable enormous amounts of data, which are generated by social networks such as Facebook, among others.
The industry that is forming as a result of the explosion of data (which extends far beyond social networks) has also been given an unofficial name: 'Big Data' (see also this report by McKinsey). Data is a new, extremely valuable raw material, which is used to improve existing products or to create completely new products.