Financial Kudos Blog

Attention Investors: Your new community is here!

We are in the process of putting the finishing touches on the beta release of the Financial Kudos community and we would like to show it off to a few users for a short 'alpha release'.  

To thank you for your efforts, you will be sporting a limited edition Kudos T-Shirt and enjoy free membership for a year - a $179.00 value!  All we ask is that you to add some content and give us some input for improving the site.

Send and email to larry@financialkudos.com and we will get the first group started early next week.

Twitter - 3 options to avoid the extra noise

Last week I was reading Informaiton Week and saw an article by Art Wittman that mentioned the "signal to noise ratio" of Twitter.  Being an audio buff, this struck as the exact issue which can face Twitter users moving forward.  How do you filter the noise so that the posts your read are important to you?  I think there are a few really good alternatives out there.

1) TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com) does a good job at filtering the information stream.

2) Seesemic Desktop (www.desktop.seesmic.com) - my personal favorite filters the information flow and has added connectivity to FaceBook.

3) Twitter search has been added to the Twtitter home page - use it and find what you are looking for.

There are many others out there that I am sure are just as good.  The thought I wanted to convey is that while more is better and the real time Internet is amazing, you can loose focus and become terribly inefficient if you don't turn down the volume.

Are you a Freethinker?

I recently spent some time reading the Seth Godin book Tribes.  In the wake of the FaceBook and Twitter explosion (or revolution - whichever you prefer) it is timely that Seth Godin focused his efforts in this direction.  I would also recommend watching his talk on TED as well - very entertaining and makes a lot of sense. 

Anyways, Godin makes many references to the 'Heretics'.  Great word! The dictionary refers us to the synonyms 'dissenter, skeptic freethinker'.  The ladder stuck with me and I equate it to the mavericks who find opportunities in the darkest of market days.  It could be  a new short position or a speculative long position it does much matter what the idea is.  What matters is that it is interesting, different and most importantly profitable.  

What we need are more freethinkers, more Heretics posting to forums and investor websites.  Without sounding too self-serving, what we need are more places like Financial Kudos so that freethinker can strut their stuff and get compensated at the same time.

CNBC gets the Twitter Buzz

Yesterday was Twitter day on CNBC.  Twitter CEO Evan Williams was on the network a few times during the day and the on-air talent has been plugigng their connection to their Twitter account. In fact we read that Twitter was mentioned 24 times on CNBC yesterday.  It seems amazing that the buzz has grown so significantly over the last few months on Twitter. It has grown even faster than the increase in unemployment.  Does everyone really have so much time during the work day to send mindless text messages to the abyss of Twitter?

Once again we draw you to the question of how we can remain focused on our work and responsibilities while finding the time (and need) to sift through all of the information at our fingertips.  All of us at Financial Kudos really enjoy the Twitter tools and many other tools, but our issues are targeted at maintaining our focus while utilizing these tools in a productive manner.  We think that in the investment community harnessing all of this information in a productive and profitable way is truly the killer app. 

In the meantime, and until Financial Kudos makes its debut, enjoy the Twitter buzz and the CNBC crew making the Twitter family a group of celebrities.