4 For Day Traders, today is like Christmas morning. When the music stops and the collective heart rate returns to baseline, some will be left holding a bag. It will likely be a fake Louis Vuitton bag for the price of a real one. Inside, there will be nothing but a bunch of worthless clipper coupons. $GRPN has only ever served to litter my inbox with unfathomable offers such as – insert a service you don’t need here – marked down from $139 to the bargain price of $39.95. After approximately a week of receiving these offers… I unsubscribed.
Social media is the flavor of the month. My Grandmother knows all about the Spacebook. The IPO’s of $FBOOK and $TWTR will be headline news. This thought was implanted into my head today by my twitter feed, after I read the following tweet via “The_Real_Fly”….
“If you think $GSVC is interesting now because of $GRPN. Wait until $FBOOK and Twitter IPO.”
This sums twitter up perfectly. Four stocks are mentioned and a very important idea has been shared….in less than 90 characters. It is elegant in its simplicity. I can scan down a single page and see the thoughts of the numerous people that I follow. I don’t need to read superfluous text to get to the heart of an issue. Often, it is pure distilled information at its finest. I can have tweets that tickle my funny bone or give me just a teaser of what may lie behind the tiny url that accompanies the tweet.
The ability to tweak the signal-to-noise ratio is essential. Anybody who tweets that they are “eating cereal” should be informed that the free AOL trial has now ended. They will then receive instructions on how to return the e-machine PC to OfficeMax. Fortunately, you can unfollow people quickly and with the minimum of fuss. I rejoice in the freedom of not knowing many of the people on my twitter feed. I follow people because of the simple exchange of ideas and not the pictures of babies wearing oversized glasses.
$FBOOK on the other hand is the daddy of all social networking sites. It gets a lot of eyeballs and many people are completely addicted…to endlessly updating others with the banality that is their lives. $FBOOK does nothing for me. Sure, it has countless Pavlovian users. If you scratch beneath the surface, $FBOOK is merely a breeding ground of envy and human tragedy. Crucially, most people are not $FBOOKing with their credit card on hand either.
To me, the most valuable social networking site has already IPO’ed. $LNKD is where the long term growth is. I am militant about my $LNKD account. To prospective employers, it is a direct reflection of myself and my peer group. I know sales people who would gladly pay money to access my digital Roladex of connections. As ir happens I’m pretty light on sales people in my network. That’s the beauty of it. I am connected only to people that fit certain desirability criteria. Hiring managers are looking at your connections. I know this because I pay $LNKD to tell me this. After meeting with clients or being on the hunt for a new gig, I can gauge how serious people or organizations are by the page visit stats. The more you pay, the more features and stats are unveiled. I can confidently say I will never delete my $LNKD account. My credit card has been on file since 2008 and I have stopped and started my subscription several times. $LNKD spiked to over $120 on IPO launch day and I will be gobbling it up if it falls below $50.
If you have enjoyed reading this you may consider clicking on my name DrSchadenfreude to follow me on twitter.
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4 Responses to “MySpace: The Detroit of Social Networks”
Yogi & Boo Boo
Interesting perspective.
DrSchadenfreude
When I get an update email from LinkedIn… I read it. You get an update of who has jumped ship, been promoted and what new contacts have been made to your extended network.
Trading_Pymph
Interesting take, but my views on Facebook and LinkedIn are direct opposites of yours.
Regarding Facebook: it _knows_ its users and therefore is able to offer very targeted ads with higher click-through rates than random $GOOG ads based on my search history.
$LNKD to me is just a collection of people I once used to know. There is no “picture” of me, no credible history behind claims in my resume/summary of skills. Just an ad page. They can make, of course, but not so much more than $MWW or any other online job-list site.
DrSchadenfreude
These people you “once used to know” are your key to getting your next job. They are the difference in being able to get the inside track in business to business deals. This is from real world experience.
The majority of my network have their picture. All details about their work history is 100% correct, it would be a major no no to fabricate anything.
I was recently approached by someone I “once used to know” on $LNKD who put me directly in touch with the hiring manager on the west coast. This was very real job with a very real salary.
MWW is not in the same league as LNKD as a direct result of its accountability.
Opposite views are encouraged.