As the world has flattened, the web has become overwhelming for many. That’s why Yahoo gets the traffic for now, but it’s stock languishes. Traffic is no longer the only shizzle for a web business.
As we enter the next phase of the web, discovery and filters will continue to take the traffic away from the aggregators.
Stock systems have long been about discovery and filtering. Those disciplined enough to trade systems over time have made killings, and not from publishing and selling subscriptions (bunk) but from trading their own accounts .
Until Twitter, I could not blame traders from wanting to chime in with ideas. Blogs are fantastic, but so freaking time consuming that you just must love writing to conrtibute. They won’t go away of course, but are just not efficient for certain industries.
Disqus (I am an investor) is a nice step in the right direction for traders and investors, but not simple enough and too distributed.
I always loved Twitter as an idea platform. Sure it’s fun to pee and tweet as I did when I started but explain the wet blackberry to the Verizon technician and you realize that what you think is funny is just plain dumb.
I stopped my bathroom twittering and began to focus on ideas. Soren took my ideas and ran with them and you now have Stocktwits . The team is focused on discovery through 140 characters of TALENT. We want to become the farm system for ideas and money makers. It just so happens that the Twitter platform is perfect for stocks because even busy traders can give back. The traders/investors win because they have a journal and what was/is a lonely truly difficult trade suddenly has community.
Because we have no blackbox of contributors, teh community can find gems and talent very early and reinforce the whole process.
What I have alway been skeptical about DIGG is the BlackBox (I don’t trust the system). Sure they send traffic, but I believe that will continue to lose value in the coming web.
In video, I love Tubemogul because we syndicate (I am an investor). We are at the center of a video producers distribution efforts and can therefore build tools to not only see who is doing best, but discover who could/should be seen. That is powerful for all sides of the monetary equation of video.
Farm systems are fantastic and underrated. In Major League sports, the farm systems have been neglected as owners with the most money, biggest markets and salary cap strategists have managed to control the games for the most part.
Not in the new web though and I am loving the possibilities.