Many of you, like me, are probably reading the Motley Fools or TheStreet.com's Internet investment pages from time to time when you are not totally engulfed in Bloggingstocks.com's deeply informative blogs.
Just about everything you read these days is way over hyped including our own pages. During the Internet bubble days when everyone talked about eyeballs you almost expected to see promotional posters of a giant eyeball cloaked in the red, white, and blue, top hat and all, staring you down, over the direct plea caption "We want you!"
TheStreet.com heralded by none other than James 'Mad Money' Cramer has survived the dot-bomb era of recent past to become one of the good stock reads on the Web. Recently though I have noticed it has become less interesting, and made more difficult to read.
I must assume that in an effort to increase revenue from advertising because of its poor subscription base TheStreet.com has stretched one page stories to four and five pages. You must click on never ending 'continued' prompts at the bottom of the page. This has allowed it to increase the number of advertisements by up to 500%. It has become so obnoxious that I refrain from the torment and simply go elsewhere on many occasions.
I'm sure when they first came up with this idea (original or not) they thought they had an epiphany. Let me put that to rest, IT'S BAD. Few people can stand the advertising bombardment that has been thrust upon us but the pain of stretching and stretching a story until it is so thin that it cannot sustain its own weight is torture. This contrasts with The Streets target audience of very busy business people, investors, movers and shakers who have better things to do then waste their time with such nonsense.
Comparing the Motley Fools site which is no less bashful in its self promotion, you find it is a clear and concise publication that can usually be concluded in one or two pages. It has a prompt for easy printing as well as other handy features. The stories are equally compelling if not more so and it offers good lessons for the beginning investor and more in depth analysis for those with greater knowledge and experience. Both sites throw pop-ups at you.
I would not slight TheStreet.com for the quality of its writing and some solid if not hidden value, but I would complain that it is far less accessible. In a world with so much competition and so much information I would think Cramer's team would focus on removing friction points, not adding them. Bloggingstocks.com refers to both amid our stock coverage and readers can decide for themselves at what point they choose to give up on TheStreet.com but they will sooner rather than later if it does not improve the customer experience. This seems to get lost sometimes when companies are struggling. Just ask The Home Depot - better yet read my recent stories on the subject, not for my poignant observations but for the droves of comments left by frustrated customers.
Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.
Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-29-2007 @ 7:08PM
William Martin said...
I took Motley Fool off my list when I realized it was beginning to be only advertising something when I read further down the page. I believe they have mislead me and I now question their integrity. I am glad Sheldon wrote this article and I hope he has some clout with the "powers that be" whoever they are.
7-29-2007 @ 6:30PM
Michael Schneider said...
Readers who are interested might wish to sign up for the free weekly newsletter put out at http://www.Barrelomoney.com. You can just sign our Private Guestbook to receive regular weekly e-mails and you are free to opt out anytime you want though no one who has signed up has ever opted out. The mailing provides an update of new items at our 3 investment Web sites and it provides investment ideas each week- a list is available at http://www.Barrelomoney.com.
7-29-2007 @ 9:04PM
Keith Shepard said...
You wrote:
You must click on never ending 'continued' prompts at the bottom of the page. This has allowed it to increase the number of advertisements by up to 500%. It has become so obnoxious that I refrain from the torment and simply go elsewhere on many occasions.
---
You know...you can block those Ads. I rarely see an Ad. Using the Firefox web browser and AdBlock or AdBlockPlus (Firefox add-ons), you can block all Ads (or most) on TheStreet.com. Nobody needs to be pounded to death by Ads on any web site. It's completely within your control using the tools above.
/Keith
7-29-2007 @ 9:40PM
Mr. noitall said...
Who cares about these other sites. BloggingStocks is the best. It has the most intelligent writers and commenters. I've read many articles and comments here that were later mimicked by others. Wasn't the mock term "core" inflation first used here? I think so. Wasn't Starbuck's first labeled as a "fad" company here first? BloggingStock is unique because it's an open forum that will let the readers speak their minds.
O.K. , Now let me tell you why I think it will take decades for the real estate market to recover, even though it might seem absurd. First of all, it sounds absurd only because it has never happed before in this country, or at least it hasn't happened during the last sixty years or so. But, that doesn't mean it can't happen. Right now I think interest rates will go up, not down, this will might drive the asking price of homes on the market down, but the cost of buying a home will not go down, since most people don't pay cash for a home. So, even if the price goes down, the monthly payments won't decrease. This, along with higher real estate taxes, utility bills, and other expensives, will make it more and more difficult to sell a house. Buy the time this all plays out and stubborn sellers ( who also believe that real estate will "always" recover in time) finally give in, more homes will come on the market driving down prices even further. Let's not forget about the demographics of this country, which has worked in favor of real estate for as long as we can remember, those demographics have always insured more demand than supply, but sometime soon that will all change, possibly creating a condition of more supply than demand for years, like decades, maybe?
Let's not discount the absurd. I remember finding an old passbook savings account book from the 1950's sometime during the early eighties and when I saw that it "only" payed 2% interest, I laughed, and thought to myself that we would never see 2% interest rates ever again, at the time 2% seemed quite ABSURD to me. Yet, I lived to see 1% interest rates!
7-29-2007 @ 10:40PM
Nobodyinparticular said...
What I hate about the Motley Fool is that they use so many crap articles that are just hooks for their subscription services, include a dozen popular stock symbols, and then give it a juicy headline, so it appears in the Yahoo Finance news summary of the companies I own.
Because of this, no matter how interesting the article sounds, I never click on Motley Fool links anymore.
7-30-2007 @ 1:26AM
mangohosting.com said...
What I dont like of motley fool is the lack of continual communication with subscribers.. I have lost a lot of money recently after a recommendation of a compnay that have lost almost 50% in the next month of Motley fools' recommendations. Even when they ask to go long term, I think they should be more precise and warn the customers to stop buying when there is inmediate risk.