Did you Digg the recent Yahoo analyst briefing? Is this the beginning of community based investment analysis?

23 May 2006 Category: Equity Market 3.0, Web 1.0 proprietary hierarchies vs. Web 3.0 community networks No Comments

Digg is an online social network. Digg has become one of the top 25 internet sites in the world within 18 months.

“Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.“

Digg is my favourite RSS feed. For a screenshot of my RSS Feed of Digg in Firefox, click here. RSS feeds are explained in the right hand column of this web site.
The success of Digg in capturing the imagination, and traffic, of such a large proportion of the internet is a story in itself. However, Digg’s success has not prompted this article.

Digg recently highlighted an article The Future of the Internet: Yahoo’s Big Bets for the Next 5 Years. A user highlighted that Yahoo recently made available an analyst briefing.

The initial posting provided the following description:-

““This is a pdf link to a slide-show used in Yahoo’s recent Analyst’s day last week. There is some GREAT information in this presentation regarding where they see the Internet heading… in addition to some interesting analysis on their role within that future.”“

The posting receiving 561 diggs (or votes) and 38 comments. Many of the comments commented on the large size of the file. The typical Digg user is a technology, rather than a finance person. There were also comments on the content of the report.

Could an online social network undertake investment analysis. Perhaps, a company or freelancer could prepare an equity research report. This report could serve as the foundation for analysis by an online social report in the same way that just occured on Digg. The tools could be extended further to include Wiki’s so that the report could be prepared by the community using an open source approach.
The briefing contains 188 presentation slides. It contains an overview of Yahoo’s strategy, competitive position in key markets, financial information and market research on the size and growth of the internet. It is worth reviewing and will not take as long as the number of pages may suggest.