It gives me great pleasure to announce that AGORACOM has recorded 26,802,451 page views in the first 3 full months since we announced the launch of our wiki-powered “Investor Controlled Discussion Forums” on October 11, 2007.
When we made first made the announcement, we set out to destroy the stock discussion forum status quo that we have all come to hate over the past 10 years thanks to unrelenting spam, profanity, stock bashing, stock hyping and assorted noise. Many thought it could not be done because we could neither change habits nor unseat the incumbents. We not only knew we could, we knew that we would. Now, more than lip service, the following numbers speak for themselves:
THE TALE OF THE TAPE
(Figures for November 2007 to January 2008. All figures reported by Google Analytics)
- Page Views 26,802,451
- Visits 1,776,973
- Unique Visitors 296,610
- Pages Per Visit 15.08
- Avg Time On Site 10:55
- Number Of Countries/Territories 187
- Top 10 (Canada, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Sweden, Mexico, Switzerland, Austria)
The numbers look even better when you consider:
- December 10 – January 7 is pretty much a write-off for financial discussion.
- The numbers stem from pure discussion. No spam, flaming and bickering traffic.
HAPPY TO SEE A HAPPY COMMUNITY
We are very happy to see the data back up our theory that investors deeply desire the ability to amalgamate and discuss individual stock investments in a civilized community.
However, we are even happier to read the reaction of our members. Here are just some of the raving testimonials we’ve been able to pull from the site so far.
While we’re talking about our members, I want to take this moment to thank each and every one of them for believing in our model, spreading the word and breathing life into it. Without them, this would be one hell of an application with no users. A special thanks goes out to all HUB Leaders that abandoned their former communities at Stockhouse, Raging Bull, Yahoo Finance and others in hopes of a better experience. I’m glad our promises to you have been fulfilled.
STATUS QUO ISN’T SHAKING – YET
Now, I know we haven’t shaken any boots at the big 3 (AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft) just yet but the numbers and testimonials clearly show we have tabled a solution that is far more appealing to investors that are no longer willing to accept the unacceptable.
Until now, the trash has ruled the day, forcing the masses to abandon discussion forums and conduct due diligence either on their own, or in small groups. It is inefficient but it is the best option we’ve had for nearly a decade.
Eventually, the market corrects inefficiencies and AGORACOM has set its sights on correcting this one.
By refusing to sacrifice quality for quantity, AGORACOM is attracting and will continue to attract smart and conscientious investors that understand the wisdom of crowds. Eventually, quality begets quality and a massive community that both generates its own content and moderates itself will replace the status quo.
BLOGS CAN NOT REPLACE DISCUSSION FORUMS
With the advent of financial blogs – and some pretty great ones that include Paul Kedrosky, Roger Ehrenberg and Marck McQueen to name but a few – some might argue discussion forums are no longer necessary, even outdated. Don’t make that mistake. Blogs are great for insight into the most important economic issues from a wide array of great minds. However, they rarely stay focused on a particular topic for more than a week, if not a day.
Stock discussion forums, on the other hand, provide investors with an ability to exchange ideas and analyze one particular stock 24/7/365. You might read about macro events (i.e. sub-prime) on a blog but figuring out how it impacts your specific stock investments requires a micro discussion that blogs can not provide.
CONCLUSION
This is Wiki meets IGC (investor generated content) at its finest. There are bigger communities to be sure – but can you find another vertical in which the need for a drastically more efficient model is more needed? Trillions of dollars are at stake. People’s futures are at stake. We can DIGG for this and research on Wikipedia for that but what are their implications for inefficient or imperfect information?
Stock discussion forums are vital to the lives of so many people. I believe we are about to witness a paradigm shift that makes them valuable once again. Stay tuned for more.
Regards,
George
They started working on certain issues in order to increase the traffic and they succeeded in it.We all hope it continues to grow.
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[…] to their HUBS every month. From our own point of view, our traffic numbers just continue to grow and grow and […]
[…] follows our quarterly traffic report issued at the beginning of the month in which we hit 27,000,000 page views in the first 3 months of launching our wiki-powered […]
Good evening, Reg and welcome to AGORACOM. Here are a few things you can do, I’ll let you choose what works best for you.
1] If you simply want to read the front-page headlines, read posts on this blog, read posts on any of the discussion forums and watch my daily show on the front page, you can do so without registration of any kind. Just go to http://www.agoracom.com every day and read away.
2] If you want to actually participate in discussion forums by posting messages, send private messages to current members, or post updates about any of the companies listed on AGORACOM, please go to the top right hand corner of the page and click on “register”. Alternatively, you can use the following link: http://www.agoracom.com/members/new
3] If you want to start a new forum on AGORACOM, please go to http://www.agoracom.com/hub_requests/new Naturally, you will also have to register for the site (#2 above) in order to be able to post to your new forum.
Finally, please remember that blogs and discussion forums are two different things. A blog is what you see here (http://blog.agoracom.com), where I (George Tsiolis) post thoughts on important matters every couple of days and you have an opportunity to post your comments in response.
Discussion forums, on the other hand, give everyone the ability to post comments and questions. We divide discussion forums by company so that we can keep discussion neat and organized. Discussion forums are the place where most of the profanity, spam and nonsense typically takes place on other sites. However, as you heard on Jim’s show, we’ve put an end to that problem on AGORACOM.
As such, you can either participate in existing forums, or start a brand new one for a company that does not yet exist on AGORACOM.
Hope this helps Reg and looking forward to seeing you and your friends on AGORACOM!
Regards,
George
I’m an invester, heard about you on Jim’s FSNH, I would like to log on to your site occationally!
How do I sign up to it — I have been staying away from blogs, for just the reason mentioned during the recent program.
I usually get my basic info from Yahoo, but often I find the profile missing, and the financials incomplete. Yours Reg
Good morning, Deep and thanks for the feedback. I think it is safe to say that 27,000,000 page views are not promotion and hype. Rather, this is traffic related to investors that have finally found a site that insists on civil conversation for the purposes of making their best investment decision possible.
I agree that Yahoo is a proven model – a proven broken model. During my Money:Tech presentation yesterday, I asked an audience of 400 investment professionals if they use stock discussion forums and 25-30 people raised their hands. In addition, it is well documented that traffic to Yahoo Finance has been dropping, while AOL Finance has now taken the top spot.
To be clear, we’re not pointing out Yahoo as a culprit. I used to be a big user of their forums but they (and all providers of advertising supported stock discussion forums) have to reconsider a business model that sacrifices quality for quantity, while driving professional investors away.
AGORACOM, on the other hand, now has a proven business model. 86 Public companies (and quickly growing) are paying AGORACOM to host a civilized community for their shareholders and prospective shareholders. Yes, to prove the model we started with the path to least resistance (small-caps) but that doesn’t mean such companies aren’t worthy of the service or that it can’t be scaled to larger companies.
FYI, did you know that 9 of the 10 best performing stocks in the past 10 years started out as micro-caps. Their average market caps were $67 million, with 3 companies have a market cap of $10M or less. Read this Motley Fool article for some great insight:
http://blog.agoracom.com/2007/08/23/9-of-the-10-best-stocks-in-past-10-years-started-out-as-micro-caps/
Regards,
George
You must be kidding. The traffic here is all promotion and hype in keeping with your business model. Remember, Yahoo allows bashers because the bashers read ads and generate Yahoo profits. It’s a proven business model. Taking fees to promote penny stocks is much less certain.
Good luck anyway.