A lot of people naturally want to promote themselves, whether or not it does any good. You can see this behavior at work when people are excited to be on TV eve

A lot of people naturally want to promote themselves, whether or not it does any good. You can see this behavior at work when people are excited to be on TV even if it's a 5 second sound bite about a car wreck, or 15 years ago when everyone* posted endless streams of pictures of their cats on their home pages (see facebook). In some cases people may look down on this behavior (see your friends), this may lead those who participate in it to justify the behavior as necessary (see actors). In other cases it may be quite necessary for their source of income (see motivational speakers, underemployed consultants). I suppose you'd have to decide for yourself which category these folks might belong in. Seeing an uptick there might be the result of the heat currently in the sector. The behavior certainly did seem to peak in 99/00 with the last market bubble. Anecdotally, self promoters often seem to flock to over heated sectors - people that aren't johnny come latelies may just be getting caught up by seeing others do it.