Steve Rubel is pondering the future of offline (ie. print) media as inflation soars. In fact, he suggests that print media may experience a perfect storm of decreased readership and increased production and distribution costs. Layer a growing sensitivity to the environmental impact of print and Rubel thinks that the growing minions of 3G phones, like the Apple iPhone, will help propel digital further.
I think we’re just at the beginning of this process in finance. News and politics have already made their online impact felt as readers opt to forgo their NY Times subs and read online instead. Yahoo Finance led the Online Finance 1.0 charge by democratizing financial data (balance sheets, income statements, press releases, etc.) Companies like SeekingAlpha are doing the same for financial opinion.
It will be interesting to see how the next leg of financial sites propels investing further. Sites like Vestopia and Covestor are already finding innovative ways for users to profit from expert investors. I think there is a lot more opportunity here for models we haven’t even thought of yet. We don’t need another interactive chart site — we need tools to help us better interpret the voluminous financial content that’s out there.
