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Adam Ostrow

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Stocktwits = Yahoo Message Boards 2.0, And I Like ItFebruary 10 2009

Following up on my post about my disastrous investment in Bank of America, somehow I was able to not only get back to even, but make enough of a profit (by cashing out yesterday morning) to either take a nice long weekend somewhere, or, partake in one of my other favorite activities, invest with house money.  I think trading the financials on a very short-term basis is one of the only ways to make (or quickly lose) money in the stock market right now, but along the way, I got an opportunity to make use of a really neat new site, Stocktwits.

The service reminds me a lot of the Yahoo Finance message boards, which are still hugely popular, but with the big difference being accountability (what you say is tied to your Twitter account) and viral distribution.   For the few days I held Bank of America, I closely followed its page on Stocktwits, which, is essentially an aggregation of everyone who is talking about the company and a member of Stocktwits.  

While, like Yahoo message boards, those who are long and generally positive and those who are short cheer the other way, knowing that the opinions are real and belong to real people is a lot more comforting than the anonymity and emotionally-driven pump-and-dump Yahoo Message boards.  The Twitter integration is also great, because when you find commentary you like, you can follow that person for future ideas and comm

My Sad Guys on Trading Floors PictureFebruary 4 2009

One of the few good things to emerge out of the financial crisis is the blog “Sad Guys on Trading Floors,” which, as the name implies, is pictures and funny captions of the generic photos that top finance sites like MarketWatch and TheStreet.com routinely use when Wall Street has a bad day.  

For the most part, I’ve had my money out of the market the past few months, until recently, when I decided it would be a good idea to try to catch the falling knife that is Bank of America.  Whoops.  So, I decided to have a little fun with it at least.  My take on Sad Guys on Trading Floors:

ReadBurner in The New York Times!December 18 2008

In an article called “Staying Informed Without Drowning in Data.”  It was actually completely unexpected and quite a surprise - we’ve been keeping things quiet on the ReadBurner front for the past month or so, though we have a few things brewing that we’ll hopefully be able to announce shortly.  

Also, despite all the forecasts (and evidence) that print media is dying, anecdotally, I would have to say the pull of The New York Times is still huge.  Each time I’ve been mentioned (I’ve been quoted a few times previously for Mashable-related stuff), someone random gets in touch to let me know they saw me there. Can’t exactly say that for any blogs, yet.

On the other hand, the mention added only a marginal amount of traffic today.  That’s probably because The NYT website didn’t actually link to the sites they mentioned in the article - a policy that a lot of newspaper sites need to change.

My StickyFan is All MeNovember 25 2008

I recently reviewed a service called StickyFan on Mashable. The basic idea is that you can upload an image and have it turned into either a life-sized cutout to stick on your wall, or into a poster. It’s designed mainly for parents and their child athletes, but, since I’m not a child athlete nor the father of one, I decided to just get one of myself. I’ve placed it over my bed:

And here I am with my StickyFan:

At some point, I think I might regret having put this on my wall, but for now, I’m incredibly amused by the whole thing. And, if you actually do think this would make a good gift for your kid as opposed to a gratuitous display of self-love, I can add to my earlier review that the product itself is quality - it was durable and didn’t come close to ripping or getting stuck on itself when applying to my wall.

In Las Vegas for BlogWorldExpoSeptember 19 2008

Just a quick update to let you know that I’m headed to Las Vegas for BlogWorldExpo with a few other members of the Mashable crew.  Give me a shout if you’re going to be there … DM on Twitter is probably the best way to get in touch :)