I have no doubt that the mobile and social web are in inning TWO to borrow from my often used baseball analogy. The veteran venture capitalist in mobile will tell you horror stories and to stay away from this ‘Fekukta’ space, but I just think they were too early. The iPhone was day one of the true smartphone.
As entrepreneurs, investors and people focused on making a living, America, despite all the hip and negative talk that we are broke (we truly are and it matters ), is at the center of the universe for social web and a key growth spot in the smartphone explosion.
There are many exciting ways to invest in the demise of America, it’s why I invest in other currencies and own some metal and commodity stocks, but it’s very crowded. It’s very noisy at the public stock market level. Furthermore, I prefer to invest the bulk of my time and money in growth areas that I understand from the get go and areas that I can be passionately knowledgeable.
As Om Malik perfectly summarizes again today, the ‘Great Internet Buildout Continues ‘…and it’s a great fast read on what’s at stake and what needs to happen. Read it and let’s discuss ideas that will best capitalize on the continued buildout.
There are so many exciting, uncrowded ways to capitalize on just this one simple theme. Despite the bleak all-time high list for me to choose from in the public markets until very recently, my conviction in this trend has my portfolio loaded to the gills in the continued build out and I am having a continued blast being a part of the jetstream.
I have chosen to focus on the ‘Social’ aspect of the buildout and the sales and marketing niches that are developing. That’s where I feel my personal edge is when attached to this sector. I had my Social Web moment in 2005 when I started a blog on Google and got my first few positive comments. I was hooked. Today, those ‘moments’ are coming fast and furious . They are happening at an exponential rate.
To further drive home my thinking, here is a video that I watch often when I get nervous about my lack of recent diversification or conviction in the mostly profitless space to date:
Remember that you can learn to trade and make a living off the public markets, you should develop a real edge in an area of long-term burgeoning growth and participate privately, as an entreprenuer and as a public market investor. That’s how you will create long-term wealth.
You will see the person who introduced the idea, the reason, the daily chart and the lifetime chart. He is developing the idea in a live, fast and furious way and taking input. It’s pretty awesome.
If you want to participate in the conversation you can just go the blog and leave comments. If you want to share your ideas real time, sign up on Twitter and follow StockTweets .
I tried to buy the domain TwitterFinance late last night but it was already taken (not by people at Twitter). The reason I started ‘twittering’ at all last May was for the stock conversation.
The nerds have been arguing about Twitter and how it will make money yada yada yada. Dummies. To the nerds Twitter has no financial value because they are talking about………HOLD……
NOTHING!
They are early adapters for sure, but the data they create is mostly worthless.
Now one area that should already be up and running is Twitter Finance. Yahoo Finance has been a goldmine for Yahoo and for a Twitter Finance should be a data goldmine and therefore an advertising goldmine. Their first hire should be Soren , a friend, great ‘twitterer ‘ and regular comment contributor. Late last week he created ‘STOCKTWEETS ‘
By now if you use Twitter, you have probably seen people using hashtags (hashtags.org ). Hashtags are used to track conversation on twitter about “things”. The service is opt-in and works by first following @hashtags, then placing a “#” whenever you reference an event, a person, or a place in your tweets.
As Soren says, let’s take advantage of the community of smart traders and investors using twitter and start tracking tweets about stocks in a similar fashion. It will work like this: First, follow @StockTweets which will collect the all data. Then, every time you tweet about a stock or ETF, prefix the ticker a $. By doing this it will be easier for StockTweets to find and track tweets about a particular stock or ETF being discussed on twitter.
Soren already has it rigged up to pull data down from FinViz . So at the close of the markets for example StockTweets could report the top tweeted ticker, its % change on the day, what sector and industry its from etc.
For me, lightweight just wins the day. I want to check in on my positions three times a day without hassle and I want it pushed to me in a clean way. Done.
Andy, Landon and the MyTrade tream have many more lightweight features coming that we have been brainstroming the past year. Sign up, stay tunes and share your ideas with me or at the MyTrade twitter page .
Disclosure – I was an investor in MyTrade (purchased by Investools).
Lot’s of questions and emails about trading and the markets so if a few hundred of you sign up for Twitter and get involved, I will start using it as a think out loud community tool for investing. I do now, but I would like to use it more as I think the market is going to be wild for a while. I would rather ‘twit’ the few bigger trading ideas I do than blog them and read a good stream of yours. Faster and timelier for everyone.
Back in May when I signed up, I said the same thing . The product is still primarily used for nerds for shameless promotion and I got tired of ‘twittering’ from bathrooms. I kept dropping my blackberry in the toilet when peeing as well. In a tough tape Twitter, it has utility. I want streaming market updates from people I trust, not a link to a post talking about web 2.0.
It will take you 30 seconds.
Andy, Phil, Dr. Brett and others are great market ‘twits’ I follow. Too many nerds talking about absolutely nothing and it’s time we create a useful stream for the tool. I wish Fred, Dick, Bijan and the rest of the VC community used it more for that than just random thoughts and updates. I am glad to check in on twitter once a day for catching up on my smartypant dudes and friends, but not leave it on live.
Don’t be lazy and if you sign up, don’t overtwitter either.
The last internet bubble was marked by the AOL/Time Warner merger. Here’s what we have going on today:
1. The Facebook/Microsoft chatter is now deafening.
2. Amazon is back at all-time highs and has an iTunes killer?
3. RIMM goes up 5 percent a day, so does Apple and Baidu.
Most important, the laggard internet juggernauts are up 15 percent the last few weeks – Ebay and Yahoo. These are the media and blog world whipping boys.
As my friend Phil twittered today- Something is building.
My thoughts are that the deals and rises are too easy and too loose. Too much back patting and knuckle fives.
I will continue to diversify and add breakouts because the tone is great and the fed is easing and the US government is spending like the good christian drunk sailors they are. I am listening to the tape and although I feel that a huge high beta drawdown is at hand, the tape says we are o.k.
Maybe this time a gigantic tech/internet merger is just the beginning. Stranger things have happened.
PS…next to me , if you like the market and are not following Phil on twitter , you are a putz.
I will still not use Twitter . Still no point. I do continue to believe that a twitter program – microblogging – for stocks would be useful and I am sure we will see it soon. That’s cool.
The service allows you to send a 30-second .mp3 sound file to Twitter. You need a twitter account, but at least it’s free. I can’t wait till a bunch of us traders our shouting out ideas, across a global network. Lot’s of cool posssibilities.
