My online chat with Spitzer's call girl, Ashley Alexandra Dupre (or at least I think it was her)

Posted Mar 13th 2008 5:30PM by Timothy Sykes
Filed under: Blogs, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Apple Inc (AAPL), About the Stock Bloggers, Short Stories, Next Big Thing, Scandals, Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), Media World, Technology

It was just an average Wednesday night for me-researching potential stock plays, working on some blog posts and catching up on many overdue emails, all to further my goal of becoming Cramer 2.0-when I saw a post on EliteTrader.com that linked to The Smoking Gun exposing Governor Spitzer's call girl "Kristen" as 22-year-old Ashley Alexandra Dupre. Apparently, Kristen was/is her professional name. Always one to jump when opportunity knocks, I raced to dig up everything I could on Ms. Dupre to post on my blog and break some news of my own. What happened next might or might not blow your mind.

Several websites had already linked to her MySpace profile (owned by News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) so I went there and grabbed her photos to add to my story. The other sites had used the photos, too, but the pictures were all tiny and spread out over multiple pages (no doubt to increase their hits and subsequently their Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) ads, so I saw opportunity in providing them all on one page just as they were. But I didn't stop there.

I also searched other social networks like Facebook and bingo, she had a profile there! That would be "my exclusive." A few more clicks and the post was published. Within minutes, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has indexed my article and while I was late to the party, my "Facebook Exclusive" made my story unique and the hits tumbled in. I'm used to 200-ish visitors/hour, but thanks to this one simple post, 1,500 people visited my site within the first 45 minutes. And that's when things got interesting.

Apparently, Ms. Dupre has a Facebook group supporting her and they also linked to my post. Nice! But then, can you believe that Ms. Dupre herself commented saying "meh..timothy has a lack of writing talent..thestreet.com is better" I couldn't stop laughing-the most famous call girl in the world right now has just put me down! Luckily, I don't get offended (and as you've read in this article, I don't judge people either). I posted back "LOL, this is too funny!" We went back and forth for a little while-she made fun of my magazine cover on my profile and I told her she needs to make more than a few grand off this-and then onto some off-the-record private messaging, but I dutifully posted the on-the-record chat on my blog (click HERE to see it all)

Just a few hours and over 10,000 visitors later, the only question that remains is was that the real Ms. Dupre? I'd like to believe, but there's really no way to tell. More importantly, this little incident exemplifies the future of journalism and it's why giants like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS), Viacom (NYSE: VIA.B) and maybe even Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) should truly recognize the power of blogging and social networking.

Timothy Sykes writes the blog timothysykes.com, is a former hedge fund manager, star of the TV show Wall Street Warriors and author of the book, An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund

Tags: ashley alexandra dupre, AshleyAlexandraDupre, blogging, eliot spitzer, EliotSpitzer, facebook, myspace, social networking, SocialNetworking, timothy sykes, TimothySykes

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-14-2008 @ 7:48PM

caleb said...

very cool

3-18-2008 @ 11:09PM

Beltway Greg said...

Damn you Timothy Sykes. First you and your Fast Money fiends pawn worthless alternative energy stocks onto the the unsuspecting masses and now you aim to capitalize on the misfortune of this beautiful young girl by posting some artfully constructed on-line conversation that you had with some bong buddy as an actual chat with the queen of all hos. Have you no shame? She has been through enough. First the GGW bus, then dressing as a cheerleader for Charlie Sheen, appearing in that rap video, and then the luv from the guv not to mention the misappropriated images from her Myspace website. Give the girl a break. All the girls be hatin' because they wish some man would pay them $4k for a little something, something, and all the boys that turned it down back in the day when they could've tapped it for free will all brag about how they hit it and quit it. And that leaves us with you young Timothy. Unlike your stock picks she has legs and she knows how to use them. Ashley, Kristen, whatever you're calling yourself these days, just give Beltway Greg a call and I promise to make all of them bad men go away.

Beltway Greg
Halfway to $260 for Apple.

3-19-2008 @ 2:34PM

John said...

While reading this article, and I was struck that it probably was relevant to a social networking site, HumanBook, which has over 250 million profiles of people, including you, your friends, classmates and relatives.

The HumanBook is a mutually managed people directory. People list their own real-life connections, and other connections they have awareness of, to create a lifelong network. The network houses the connections, and then the collaboratively updated address book nurtures them, assuring that they need never be lost. HumanBook is the tool that will allow you to cherish and sustain all of the connections of your whole life. So if you're interested, go to http://www.HumanBook.com and find your profile today!