wall street lends credibility to blogosphere
September 4th, 2007
By and large, heads of companies and their communications departments, representing various degrees of bigness, ignore blogs. The employment space, arguably a microcosm for others, primarily perceives blogs as a bunch of uneducated losers better left alone than deserving any attention. Admittedly, the blogosphere is largely a lot of clutter with little value or impact. Hey, I’m a proud member.
But there is growing reason for the suits to pay attention: Wall Street.
See, investment firms and investors of all sizes are paying attention to the stocks they recommend, watch, buy and sell. And in many cases, these entities plug into services like Google Finance, which track information about select stocks. The data they receive can include blogs.
A quick look at Monster on Google (flirting with a 52-week low, by the way) shows recent blog posts about the company. Just put “Monster Worldwide” in your post, and there you are for hundreds, if not thousands, of investors in and watchers of the stock to peruse.
Additionally, investment firms, whose job it is to watch stocks closely, are actively engaging bloggers they perceive as experts on particular industries and companies. The information they’re seeking can bleed into both public and private organizations, so the impact is far-reaching. The level of influence is certainly debatable, but it is happening and it is growing.
If bloggers can effect the ratings of stocks, sway investors from buying or selling, or even drive money into the private sector, then they’re worth some attention and bridge-building.
September 4th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
the message boards on Yahoo! Finance are a frequent source of lollerblads and lolrus’.
For example:
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/mb/AAPL
and of course
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/mb/MNST
September 5th, 2007 at 11:08 am
thank you for this post, jeez- my boss keeps saying “What - why, I don’t get it, what is the point of blogs- they seems so useless…” this is a constant discussion, so thanks for the additional ammo.
;p