Just as "Web 2.0" is being used to describe the latest frenzy of activity on the Internet, the term easily describes what's happening in the entertainment biz and its Web dealings.

Many of the players in the first dot-com craze of 1998-2001 have returned for a second go-around, seeing the Web as a viable platform to launch businesses.

Just follow the money.

Much of it leads these days to the major tenpercentaries, where most of the new-media agents of the late '90s are still brokering deals.

Richard Wolpert, former prexy of Disney Online and the chief strategy officer at RealNetworks, now oversees the William Morris Agency's new-media fund, a pact with two Silicon Valley venture capitalists and AT&T to back entertainment-based tech firms.

Rival CAA, which launched Will Ferrell's site FunnyorDie, is similarly looking to raise $150 million for a new-media fund. Jeff Berg is in talks for a fund at ICM, while UTA has started investing in startups, including 60Frames, a digital production and syndication shop created by former UTA Online head Brent Weinstein.

Beyond the agencies, Ross Levinsohn, former prexy of Fox Interactive Media, has paired up with past AOL topper Jonathan Miller to launch Velocity Investment Group and acquire Internet startups. Haim Saban is devoting millions to digital ventures with new-media vet Craig Cooper (of PureVideo Networks) spearheading the effort.

Dot-com road kill such as Digital Entertainment Network are back (Den.net says so). The site shuttered in 2000 after a high-profile implosion that saw its founders blow through $65 million and flee the country amid a sex scandal involving minors. New site will soon offer some of the original's programming.

Other first-generation entertainment sites are still around. They're just operating under different owners.

iFilm and Atom Entertainment, for example, were picked up by Viacom and MTV Networks, with the latter's Mika Salmi now heading up MTV's digital efforts.

Pop.com, Go.com and iCast may be goners, but content creators Icebox.com and John Evershed's Mondo Media ("Happy Tree Friends") never closed their doors. The hype just went away -- noisy hype that's moved to surround the creators of MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, and even Michael Eisner, now a producer of Web series like "Prom Queen" and his latest, "The All-for-Nots."

As for the rest of the first dot-com generation?

Some never actually left the Web world. Studio execs like Ira Rubenstein, Don Buckley and Gordon Paddison are still at Sony, Warner Bros. and New Line, respectively.

"They never left, they just went into low-profile mode," says Jim Moloshok, a former Warner Bros. Online exec who moved to Yahoo and then HBO before assuming his current post at GoFish, a kid-targeted network of sites that competes with Disney and Nickelodeon. "There was a lot of visibility at the beginning because we were breaking the rules and doing things that had never been done before."

If they didn't revisit the Web, they went to other hotspots: mobile or videogames.

Z.com topper Joe DiNunzio heads 42 Entertainment, a successful creator of online games used as promo tools for vidgame releases like "Halo 2" and pics such as "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Tale." Steve Stanford left Icebox for mobile phone firms Boost, Amp'd, Voce and This Just In.

Not all stayed in traditional entertainment. Robert Tercek went from heading up digital at Sony to the mobile space and recently launched PeopleJam, a self-help site. Former Sony interactive exec Lynda Keeler recently launched e-tailer Delight.com, after having served a stint heading up LA.com. And Jim Banister, who worked with Moloshok at Warner Bros. Online is now running new-media ventures from Park City, Utah.

Other execs went back to their roots.

David Neuman, a former exec at Walt Disney TV, NBC and Channel One, spent a short stint at Den before heading to CNN. He's now at Current. Pop.com's Megan Wolpert is a producer at Spyglass Entertainment.

But don't be surprised if they, too, go back to the Internet.

"Because they were there in the beginning, they really understand the medium," says one agent, adding that's especially true when it comes to venture capital firms. "VCs need people who understand how to deal with content providers."

At the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, last week Eisner told Mark Cuban that it's going to pay off to be an early pioneer. "All of a sudden, we're going to wake up, and professionally driven content for the Internet is going to explode."

Funny, the first round of dot-com execs thought that, too.