Interesting concept — culling the non-MSM info sources for key data, sentiment and regulatory info.
Back in 1998, my pal Jeff (then at Yahoo!) and I had a long conversation about this same concept. We never did anything with it, and it looks like these guys did . . .
How to access their data? Do they plan to offer any public services?
I can’t find any useful links on their site…
Appologies for being obnoxious, ( You’re doing great work here; I visit every day.) but is this chart providing an insight that I’m just missing? It seems to be a chart of the obvious. MSM has a larger audience than blogs, et. al., so investors pay more attention to MSM. Seems just like the type of information I would get if I turned on, well, the MSM.
What would be more useful would be an analysis of the “usefulness” of the information presented by these sources and maybe how that has changed over time.
What I’d see as useful:
– The generally-accepted theme that the shorter the reporting cycle, the less “useful” the news would be. CNN (for example) will tell me that X died, but I’d have to wait for a slower cycle periodical (The Economist, for example) to provide examples of how the death will affect the world (and optionally me). Q: Is this theme still true in the era of increasing blogs? I.e. is the accepted pattern of longer reporting cycles = more in-depth coverage/accuracy still valid in the era of blogs?
– How accurate overall are these sources compared to one another? Cronkite was the gold standard of ethical, accurate journalism. Now in the era of ‘everybody’s got to be InfoTainment, how do blogs/new media stack up? How about the future?
Obviously there are tons of infotainment blogs, but are we able to get better journalism from some blogs than most existing MSM?
– Will blogs succumb to the pressure to cater to advertisers (or be corrupted by outside forces/noise) rather than journalism?
– How will MSM respond to an increase in journalistic integrity in blogs (if it is true)? Will they continue to provide only InfoTainment and thus continue to wither?
Can one say that ‘Blogs’ vs. ‘MSM’ is analagous to ‘next-door neighbor’ vs. ‘National Association of Realtors’?
Sure a blog/neighbor is a single (anecdotal) source vs MSM/NAR, which can provide more more sweeping, encompassing statistics.
My neighbor says house prices are falling. NAR says they’re rebounding. Which is more useful to me– accuracy or precision/authority/integrity?
etc.
Again, sorry to be obnoxious.
Humbug
The news / stock overlay is similar to finance.google.com, but with blog data, instead of the wire feeds. Very cool. They have built “the machine”, and now…
I wish them luck, as they are targeting “alternative” Internet data sources. That means mining web sites, blogs and RSS feeds and doing keyword or stock symbol matches for delivery. They are going to have a difficult time trying to stay in front of a new wave of junk data which will come on like a Tsunami.
If their service takes off and has a user base, the signal to noise ratio is going to change for the worse very quickly as people start fake blogs and pump stocks. Financial blogs will become spam-ified and low-grade, and the end users will have to stay on top of screening blog feeds. When a rating or scoring system is hatched, only a handful of blogs will be trusted, and they will have become “main stream-ed”. These blogs will become an echo chamber, and they will self-synchronize.
Crazy Tangent: At first such a service would help make the EMH more of a reality. And then the effect will wane, and the EMH would still be the joke that it is. Ha! Still just a herd.
The outliers tidbits and hints from abstract sources are where the diamonds in the rough will be hidden, and they will be likely screened out, by necessity.
If they hire people or analysts to scrub the data then they might have something worth subscribing to. Otherwise their “machine” is going to be buried and brought to its knees by a new wave of blog spammers/jammers.
I do not mean to be a naysayer. I wish them much luck and understand the investment and development effort put into such a project.
ON THE POSITIVE SIDE, I think the same “engine” they have built will prove to be more useful, lucrative, and accurate at amassing information which would then be sold to manufactures and marketers trying to poll interest in their products.
I might also add that a subscription to the “interest in product Y” data, would probably yield better investing hints than the mined data coming from financial blogs.
My best wishes go out to the developers, and I hope that I am wrong about their primary service.
-rebound
That chart begs the question of eliminating false information – it’s assuming that all that stuff on the far left is true. In general, the further to the right you go, the more likely it is that a given fact is true (we’re talking about business news, so there’s relatively little policical influence and spinning). So maybe these guys get you data before it hits the mainstream, but if they’re also giving you inaccurate data, that may not be much help.
I thought this is what sell-analysts were supposed to do–minus the irritating chart, of course.
Could this service become the victim of a “negative network effect,” i.e., the more people who subscribe, the less useful it becomes?
Google and the other SE’s weighting algorythms are so heavily skewed towards blogging that opinions from people which should carry no real weight, as well as downright “false facts” get way too much play. Hopefully they will adjust these Search Algorythms soon to downplay blog posts, but in the meanwhile……..
Very clear and shiny – I’m sorry –
News before it’s news – well you just have to know where to find it….these folks are not god chosen….just more shiny – bull$hit in a package. I do not apologize.