Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. And the differences are profound.
—Chris Andersen, The Long Tail
Blogging investment ideas
As fundamental, structural changes have occurred in the stock research industry over the past few years, investors no longer have to rely on their brokers to get access to information about investments. A scarcity of information with limited distribution has given way to almost unlimited abundance of information widely available. Technology investor and venture capitalist Fred Wilson calls this entire process a dislocation “because of this move from scarcity and exclusivity to abundance and scale.”
The velocity of information is continuing to accelerate, led by technological advances in Internet connectivity, social media, push email, blogs, and an easy-to-use method of publishing Internet content, Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
News + Blog Analysis = Actionable, tradable information for investors
Bloggers are quickly rivaling investment bank analysts and top journalists in their capacity to research a broad swath of stocks as well as drill deep down in their analysis. As financial information has become more democratized, investors should harness the long tail to help make sense of it all. In turn, this new model provides investors with a real-time research platform to bubble up previously undiscovered investment opportunities and then surgically analyze them. Blogger opinion resides in the long tail, a tremendously valuable repository of information just waiting to be tapped.
Sites like Seeking Alpha and Stock Twits enable investors to tap into great investment research being published 24/7 around the world.
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