People always ask…why not StockTWEETS.com and I have to explain that TWITS is better because we are goofing on the real TWITS of finance – CNBC and the rest of the talking heads.

Every day we get further proof of the decay of financial journalism. Today’s is the banning of Dan Lyon’s for calling out a lying CNBC reporter on buying the crap about Steve Job’s not being sick . Watch the video and you won’t believe it.

CNBC will not survive as a network if this bear progresses and that is something that would be just. It would not be missed and I give them credit for surviving this long. They have done it with the cunning ability to get dumber. Genius.

While they get dumber, we, the investing public, get smarter. Sure we have our wounds, but technology and this final meltdown will give rise to the distributed research model that will rely on the new technologies.

The ‘super’ market voices of the future will be mostly signal and not noise. The ‘super’ market sites will filter best for the market voices with the most signal and least noise as well.

Obviously, we at Stocktwits believe we are on the right path. It is great to see Jon Markman, do some research for the story he just published at MSN on why Twitter and Stocktwits are on the right path as a ‘remarkable resource’ . Yes I am biased, but take a good read. Jon has been covering the area for years on behalf of MSN and has a huge following. He does his research. Here are some of my favorite parts:

For some people, Twitter is merely an amusing distraction. But for many investors, it has become as essential as the Internet itself, serving as a worldwide squawk box in which trade ideas are blurted out, analyzed, opened in real time with real money, observed and closed in an endless loop of symbols and passion. Somehow, and no one is quite sure why, the conversation has not yet devolved into the sort of mean, grubby, spam-filled vipers’ nests that Web bulletin boards and chat rooms became a decade ago. It’s still a place for well-mannered gentlemen and ladies who simply try to learn from each other, collaborate, commiserate and celebrate.

Because the ethic is to help, collective ideas are not shouted out merely to be heard. To gather enough followers so that his or her comments are heard, each Twitterer, as users are called, must find a way to build his or her reputation. A common type of “tweet,” or post, is a short link to a news story, blog entry or chart topped with a five- to 15-word explanation.

You gain in reputation if a post is found valuable enough to be “re-tweeted,” or passed along by your followers to theirs. That new circle will then have its interest piqued in your ideas. If some folks in that circle decide to follow you, you’re off and running in building a “Twitterverse” for exchanging views.

Essentially, tweeting is a combination of micro-blogging (posting quick, time-stamped ideas in a public journal), instant messaging (posting to people receiving in real time), texting (posts must be as short as SMS cell phone messages), high school (posts must be cool if they’re going to build your reputation and attract followers) and mass communications (posts can be seen by a single follower, if you’re just starting, or thousands, if you’re as cool as venture capitalist Fred Wilson.)

AND

Paul Kedrosky, a San Diego investor and finance-tech blogger who has built a big reputation on Twitter for a stream of smart, acerbic comments and links to academic papers, told me he believes the revolutionary twist of Twitter is that it allows “mass, real-time conversations in a scalable way,” permitting “a constant, dynamic, ‘eavesdroppable’ conversation about capital markets” that’s similar to the running commentary and wise-cracking heard on squawk boxes at brokerages during the trading day.

Kedrosky marvels at the civility but assumes it will go away once more people discover the medium. “The more successful it is, the less useful it will become,” he mused.

The brevity of each individual message is part of the charm, not a limitation. “For me, it’s immensely liberating,” Kedrosky said. “At 140 characters, there’s no obligation to flesh things out. And you also discover that it forces you to be concise; if you can’t force your idea into 140 characters, maybe it’s not worth saying. These kinds of constraints are valuable.”

I am confident that our community will grow and that we will find the most new voices on markets. I am confident because of the passion I am seeing from this community and the confluence of events and technology.