Archive for December, 2009

  • Falafel and Foursquare…A Match Made in Hummus

    Posted by admin on December 13th, 2009

    it’s no secret…Howard loves his falafel. There is no doubt that Howard will run the biggest falafel network when the time is right.

    If you want to hang with me late night, you must engage in falafel hunts.

    I was hanging out with Dr. Phil in SOHO recently and we went to falafel country a few blocks away. I like to test out all the joints and play no faves. Many to choose from on my quest for perfection.

    We came upon Sam’s Falafel…not clean, but at 1am…..

    Phil and I were not high, nor drunk (not that is anything wrong with that) but really enjoyed us a Sam’s falafel.

    I said …hey Dr. Phil…should I be the mayor of Sam’s Falafel?

    That got Phil and I thinking…why do I need to be mayor of Sam’s and what are the odds that Sam would get Foursquare if pitched on it’s benefits. I would like to repeat that we were still not high or drunk (not that there is still anything wrong with that), but obviously thinking clearly from our falafel buzz.

    Here’s the thing…

    The opportunity from web marketing is nearly infinite in the returns it can provide your business, large or small. AND that goes for the web service provider as well. So many great web startups, so little marketing talent.

    I passed on Foursquare because I just did not get it. My friend Andy Finkle was urging me to do it. He got it.

    For great ideas, money is a commodity and you don’t want my money if I can’t get fired up and pitching your product all day every day.

    I still don’t get Foursquare nor do I feel I need it, but I love the way Fred is using it . If I was marketing Foursquare today, it would be fun. I would show Sam and the world that I could double their business. I would make Sam’s famous. Thousand’s of OTHER Sam’s would see the potential. It would be cheap to do and a powerful case study.

    It’s not just a great time to start a business in the social web, it’s a tremendous time to be a great marketer and hustler.

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  • StockTwits and the CME Group

    Posted by admin on December 13th, 2009

    We are happy to announce a partnership between StockTwits and the CME Group.  With the growing popularity of the Forex and Futures Streams on StockTwits the timing couldn’t be more perfect.
    Allan Schoenberg and CME Group really get social media and StockTwits and understand the power of the platform. We are excited to work with them [...]

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  • Loving Glue…Here is Why…

    Posted by admin on December 13th, 2009

    Glue is the easiest social network and recommendation engine on the web. The best part is that you don’t have to do anything– simply install the toolbar and it just works. As you surf the web glue will pick up on your interests such as books, movies, music, restaurants, and more. Here is their latest product release and feature set .

    They definitely have some great investors (Fred Wilson, Brad Feld and James Robinson).

    Here is Fred’s post on why he likes it and why you should try it.

    The latest release has some major changes. The most noticeable change is the size of the toolbar. It’s smaller! By 40%!

    Aside from size, the most important features are accentuated. I love glue because it is so easy to share content. The big “I like it” button allows me to recommend content to my followers. Worried that your friends aren’t on glue? Well. My best friends aren’t either. However, they follow me on FaceBook and Twitter. Clicking the “Ask Friends” button allows me to seamlessly share content with them on those networks.

    My favorite features are aggregation and recommendation. If I am on any page recognized by glue, I can quickly view related content around the internet. If I am looking at a recording artist on Wikipedia, I can watch their music videos via YouTube, purchase their music on iTunes, or listen to them on Pandora, or Last.fm. No more digging around. If I like what I hear I always want to discover more. The personalized suggestion is also a killer feature. I will now receive recommendations of similar artists.

    AdaptiveBlue has also redesigned user profiles. They are now accessible to everyone via the web. You can view mine here . Everyone can view my favorites and recent activity. If you are a glue user, you will now have a personalized suggestion stream that is based on your likes, friend favorites, and everyone’s popular.

    They have also added a game component to the network. Users can earn stickers and the “Guru” title for participating and commenting on items.

    If you haven’t installed Glue it’s worth a look. I promise it is easy, addicting, and will add a lot of value to your browsing experience.

    Disclosure – I am an investor (through our Knight’s Bridge Capital Fund) and of course biased, but if I can use it, anyone can.

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  • NASDAQ Launches Killer iPhone App with StockTwits Integration

    Posted by admin on December 13th, 2009

    This morning, NASDAQ has launched a killer iPhone app with a ton of cool features.  You can dowload it here and TechCrunch has written about it here.
    We are excited to report that the app includes StockTwits streams pulled from our own API.  This is so cool because it gives our community a great way to [...]

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  • Deep Spam Thoughts…Media is Free. Attention is Priceless.

    Posted by admin on December 13th, 2009

    Spam owns my physical mailbox, but not my digital inbox and social world.

    I think about spam all the time and have been wanting to write a detailed post about my thoughts.

    This tremendous slideshow that Fred Wilson posted from David Gillespie got me thinking and writing:

    Am I spamming, are my businesses spamming?

    Are my kids getting spammed and with what?

    My son Max is for some reason excited to get our mail. The main reason was he was waiting for his Bank of America debit card (which came late and you know the rest of that story). He reads out all the companies names and I tell him to throw them all away. He now knows JUNK MAIL.

    Max was excited to get text messages on his new phone too, even though he had one friend that knew his number. He quickly discovered that the vibrating his phone was making was from spammers, but I wish I could remember what he called them the first time I asked him why he was not running anymore to his vibrating phone.

    Obviously we have a spam problem in the country and it’s two fold:

    1. Corporate America

    2. We are Lazy

    Corporate America blitzkriegs us in every battle and are blowing us away in the war. They have the money and they have the lobbyists. One recent example is Experians’s legal victory over Lifelock, preventing Lifelock from placing fraud alerts on your behalf.

    As Todd Davis (CEO of Lifelock, sums it up) ‘We can now continue our mission of helping to protect consumers and their data, while Experian continues to make millions of dollars yearly by selling personal data.’

    Experian’s main business is selling your personal information. They have an oligopoly with Trans Union and a few other companies and banks on the FICA credit score they created and than use it to sell your data everywhere.

    I concede. You win. Congratulations corporate America. You own my mailbox. Mail IS Spam and I just throw out everything.

    What’s funny about this is the government loses as I shred their mail and I shred their photo radar tockets along with the other spam in my physical mailbox.

    I refuse to let them win my attention though and technology will win out.

    GMail has done an outstanding job for me filtering out spam. Technology is winning.

    But Technology can’t do it all, you must be active.

    At Stocktwits we battle the financial spammers all the time. In my opinion it just makes our business stronger as we learn and develop our own secret sauce.

    In my personal use of the social web, I am vigilant with a discovery process and filtering process. It keeps the spammers at bay. If you are not lazy, you can too.

    In other words, quit complaining about spam and take action.

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  • Don’t Fear the Social Web Bubble…Embrace It.

    Posted by admin on December 13th, 2009

    I am pretty sure we are still in a bubble phase.

    It’s a bubble of bubbles world we now live in.

    Since the 80’s we have been printing money and printing money leads to bubbles. Persistently low interest rates leads to bubbles. It is obviously intoxicating for governments to just ‘ease baby ease’. It’s Pavlovian monetary policy.

    Under this policy, bankers have evolved like cockroaches, using technology in ever more creative (some would say evil) ways to protect themselves and create the ILLUSION of value like never before.

    Since we have done little to protect the consumer from the ‘Too Big to Fail’ companies, and the bankers who have now learned marketing, we will inevitably get soaked in another financial bubble in the not too distant future.

    While I may not chase the ‘Too Big To Fail’ dream of world dominance, a bazillion others in the ‘BRIC’ will. They are getting a taste of freedom AND money. They are 50 years behind the US roadmap and eerily copying it – just exponentially faster. Imagine where they are in the GREED lifecycle. It’s banker heaven.

    It is too hard and aggravating for me to invest a sizable percentage of my portfolio in this corrupted and broken ‘Too Big To Fail’ stock market environment. You know my major themes based on the macro picture.

    There is one bubble that I do not fear…the social web/social leverage bubble. It will inflate and get silly, but thousands upon thousands of profitable niches will show themselves.

    My journey in the social web started in 2005 when I looked up the term ‘Term Sheet’ on Google while drafting one up for Golfnow.com. I discovered Brad Feld’s blog and Fred Wilson’s blog. I started my own blog on Google Blogger and wrote like a madman. Nobody was listening. As niches from Twitter, Stocktwits and other microblogging platforms expand, the speed to an audience will accelerate for the talented.

    It will be years of rolling up/aggregating and years of discovery for the adventurous.

    It will be a seemingly endless wave and if you position yourself accordingly, businesses will show up that carry you along to wealth you could never have imagined (wealth is not just money).

    I watch it happen for people that get discovered every day on blogs, twitter, and Stocktwits…LIGHTBULBS clicking on, relationships sparking, matches being made, brains being leveraged. It has happened always as the world has shrunk, but never this fast and never this simply.

    Enjoy the fact that it is impossible to value and ridiculed.

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  • The CME and Stocktwits…Da Merc!

    Posted by admin on December 13th, 2009

    Back in the heyday of trending stocks in 2007, the CME was the shizzle.

    I know this because we Wallstripped them in one of my faves:

    Today, the CME Group it’s a global $23 billion powerhouse of exchange, data and trading floors .

    The Company is all over ‘real time’ and social web and Allan Schoenberg and I have been Twitter friends for quite some time.

    I am glad to say that the CME is now a sponsor of Stocktwits , specifically the Forex and Futures streams and working with us to educate and promote Forex and Futures trading.

    I believe you can’t predict things in the social web and you can’t force community. Out of nowhere, the Futures and Forex streams on Stocktwits have come alive and there amazingly talented traders contributing ideas and links. I had little to do with that and that’s cool.

    The CME wants to help us build on that momentum and help grow the community now that it has sparked.

    It’s awesome.

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  • Yahoo and The Biggest Loser…Shedding Fat

    Posted by admin on December 13th, 2009

    Yahoo ( $yhoo ) gets no respect.

    Today, they announced earnings. No one cared.

    Yesterday, Apple announced earnings…EVERYONE cared.

    After Yahoo announced a tripling of earnings (i imagine all from cost cutting), you CAN’T find one story on TechMeme about them. Apple is still the whole front page. Actually, there is one story on TechMeme…the head of Yahoo Apps ( freaky Bill Gates lookalike) resigned . Oy.

    Yahoo is getting lighter for sure. They have gone from an obese 500 pound, ugly American, to a 320 pounder. Still fat, hard to look at and mostly tired, but a flickr (get it) of light and hope.

    In my world, if you mention Yahoo, you think of one thing…Yahoo Finance. For all Yahoo’s flaws, Yahoo finance still rocks in it’s aggregation of data. It does everything I need except a normal conversation (go read the comments to Tech Ticker and the message boards) and a completely live, honest and raw video 24 hour finance network. They could fix that pretty quickly :) .

    Yes, they should have taken the Microsoft offer, but it’s kind of cool they told Ballmer to stick it. I probably would not have and you know what I think of Ballmer :) .

    With a market capitalization on $24 billion and sales of $6 billion it is hard for me to get excited about the stock or company on any kind of valuation or momentum formula. That said, kudos to 12-13 year old company that could be this big, hated, loved and ignored this much.

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  • The Inconceivable Rally ‘Part 3′…The Upside Crash

    Posted by admin on December 13th, 2009

    The major rally underway is now upside crash. It is glorious.

    It is gathering steam, not slowing down.

    There is insane fuel provided by global liquidity, a weak dollar, tired sellers and now buyers scared of missing out.

    I have no idea when these events end, but based on the four trends above…never seems possible :) .

    I am bearish on employment, but who isn’t. It’s quite possible that we are all wrong and jobs are right around the corner from an industry just beginning that few have heard of.

    I wrote my first ‘Inconceivable Rally ‘ post in May. I thought the rally would continue. I wrote my second one in July and outlined where the leadership was and thought it would likely continue.

    Tonight is my third and last thoughts about the inconceivable rally, because we are in completely uncharted prediction territory. Other than March 9th, I am longer than at any point this year, which is still very light in stocks. I have moved most of my investment dollars into the web. I will win big or go down in a blaze of www.com.org.net glory.

    As the rally continues, the have’s will keep taking from the have not’s. That include’s Apple $aapl taking from RIMM, Nokia et all Google taking from Microsoft and Yahoo and China taking from most of the rest. Granted, in all three of these cases, the losers are also just giving…

    The have’s are always taking from the have not’s. The best investors recognize it and position themselves accordingly.

    There is now only one problem with the rally in stocks…CNBC and some real shitty money managers are getting off the hook. I hate that more than anything. Some time the guilty just get off. Let it go. Serenity now.

    In the end, as I was chatting with The Fly tonight, America on the whole has become fat and lazy. Sure I am outraged about Bank Of America gauging me, but I have choices and I am marching with my wallet out the door. I would like to picket, but I need to work twice as hard as I did 3 years ago just to tread water.

    Life is difficult.

    America rocked and took names when it smoked and drank and ‘drilled’ the earth dry. WE robbed the freaking banks. Those glory days are long gone. Today we have corn, fructose, ‘green peace’, gun control, splenda and 20 minute ads for a drug that will cure our depression but slowly kill us with anal leakage and pee that smells like cucumber.

    What should you do?

    It’s simple…same as always…invest accordingly.

    Today, we blog and tweet our outrage, mostly in the dark. It’s dumb to most, but it’s today’s freedom. I want to be eyeball high in freedom. Money flows to freedom.

    As of tonight, the inconceivable rally is fun and extremely underowned.

    Just trying to keep it simple for you.

    Disclosure – Long $amzn, $aapl, $goog, $bidu Oil, Gold, other mobile and agriculture stocks.

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  • StockTwits is Seeking an Intern

    Posted by admin on December 13th, 2009

    We are looking for an awesome intern in the NYC area to help manage and expand the StockTwits Network.
    If you have an interest in publishing, finance, and/or tech please comment on this post or send an email to stein at stocktwits dot com.

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