Will the Real Carnival Barker Please Stand Up?

This has been a big week for Stocktwits.

Lot’s of press, lot’s of new users and lot’s of attention.

It always feels good to be noticed and appreciated. That said, no matter how much I explain Stocktwits to the media people calling in, they explain our product wrong in print. This happens to everyone…case in point for the moment being Twitter.

This morning in my inbox, I got a link to this beefy post from ‘The Motley Fool’…’Twitter: The Carnival Barker of Investing‘

Here is the Wikipedia definition of a carnival barker.

Here are the Motely Fool ‘articles on Yahoo Finance right now under ‘Headlines’ (just for today) for Apple’s stock:

Is it time to wear your computer?

Apple Deserves a Place in the Dow!

The Winners and Losers of Facebook Home

What to expect from Apple’s Next Game Changing product

Will Apple hita New Low?

No Carnival barking here! I assume Carnival Barking as Wikipedia defined it meant 140 characters, and not hammering the Yahoo Finance headline feed for clicks.

My point is that given the right tools and the right price, every human is promotional and will ‘Carnival Bark’. Corporations and better yet – ‘Media Companies’ are the worst offenders. Because they pay for ‘clicks’ I guess it’s ok to ‘Carnival Bark’ all over the site which you paid to display ‘content’.

The real truth is…thank goodness we have new financial tools like Stocktwits and of course Twitter that allows any investor the ability to listen in, manage the flow and gain mentorship around financial information and news.

GNIP has a fantastic post up about ‘How Content Diffuses Through Social Networks‘. The article won’t go viral, but it should because information is flowing like money through the networks that GNIP covers in the case study. It is happening 24/7/365 and I see no end in sight.

You can ignore it, make fun of it or invest time in it. You may end up turning it off, but I doubt it.

Like I keep saying, the information is outside the walls of the old financial guard. It is never going back inside. It was abused inside those old walls and when released, it was mutated and late.