Financial “New Media” is Special

November 8, 2009 in Markets, Technology

Today, while browsing through StockTwits I came to the realization that financial “new media” is pretty fucking disruptive.  In no other vertical have you seen new media gain more traction and be taken more seriously than in the financial community (besides perhaps Tech but the tech world has never had a mainstream media heavyweight).   Heck, Geithner must think so, since the Treasury invited a slew of bloggers to talk with them about issues.

These days, I consume mostly financial new media.  I let my twitter stream and especially gatekeepers like Abnormal Returns filter out the news and bring me the relevant information.  I don’t visit the mainstream news websites (besides maybe Bloomberg) directly, only indirectly through links.    I don’t read sell-side research but I have an giant decentralized research desk at StockTwits at my disposal.  When I’m in the mood for entertaining and awesome market and economic analysis, I don’t turn on Jim Cramer but read The Fly, Epicurean Dealmaker, Clusterstock, or Reformed Broker.

And I am not alone.

But why?

Mainstream financial media is mostly spam, and can’t be consumed from a centralized news source if you are looking for an informed opinion.  It has to be consumed as a portfolio of news sources to be the most valuable.  This would make sense because the stock market basically spams us with a whole bunch of useless information and its so easy to report the noise.   Money has no time for spam.

Another reason it is so popular is because of low barriers to enter. Pretty much everyone has exclusive access to “the story”. The story is the market and everyone has a front row seat to the show.  It makes it very easy for bright minds to report on it.  There are no exclusive interviews with the market, and its assumed that most market participants interviewed are talking their book – which essentially devalues whatever access large news orgs have.

Financial New Media also has had an enormous amount of investment.  Heck, Motley Fool, a horrible news outlet company that is borderline new media raised $25 million, which  is about 2% of NYT’s market cap.  That’s pretty big.   No other vertical has had more investment.  This makes sense, because financial information is tied to capital and should throw off more money, and because of this financial new media is a bit more evolved.

I believe that with financial new media we can see the future of some of the other types of media.  And, to all those who scream the death of newspaper – the future looks good.