Just stumbled onto a Yahoo Media Innovation group project recently launched named Hot Stocks. Essentially, its an application that runds on either MySpace or Facebook.
How it works
Users vote their sentiment on stocks and can watch Yahoo Finance network videos. Once the social aspect is utilized by getting friends to sign up, Hot Stocks bubbles up aggregate meta data from users in your network and displays top and lowest rated stocks.
So?
I was hoping to review the actual app but there was a problem loading it onto my Facebook. I don’t know whether it was a data issue on Yahoo’s side or Facebook’s API just not working.
But regardless of how it works, it’s not even really a cool product. This is so similar to so many other ho-hum social pick type websites. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed but when I think of Yahoo’s asset base, Yahoo Finance is a take-down, knock-out 800 pound stud. There is so much information flowing through the Yahoo Finance behemoth including:
- search statistics: Like Google’s Zeitgeist, Yahoo could mine search statistics both on Yahoo Finance and on Yahoo.com. Trends in this info could be really interesting for investors in terms of stock discovery.
- message board activity: I know, I know — everyone says they are a huge asset for Yahoo and everyone agrees they are just broken. 95% of the info contained within is garbage but there are some jewels buried in ‘dem hills. More so, trend data would be really valuable. Yahoo has dipped its pus-infected ingrown toenail big toe into this type of crowd sourcing with a wimpy widget called “Community Sentiment” on their homepage. It’s too shallow though — just telling me bullish and bearish sentiment from the message board without even explaining how it’s compiled or where to look for more info just doesn’t cut it.
- why not create the social network within Yahoo itself?: why bother creating a Yahoo app on other social platforms. The data and subsequent valuable info resides all within Y! Finance itself. Make it more translucent. Let people drill down. Provide overlay on top of just a monster site. That’s the asset. Mine it there — not try to recreate something offsite. Marketwatch is attempting to do something similar with varying levels of success with its community site. Information generated is then intertwined onto stock pages themselves on Marketwatch.
In spite of mere incremental changes over the span of years, Yahoo Finance is still the biggest game in town. There is so much untapped potential it’s sick.
