The Street.com: Ignore Us at Your Own Risk
By Jessica N. Bowles-Martinez
TheStreet.com is a site devoted to informing its readers about the
status of various businesses, measured mostly in stocks of companies.
It also serves as a place where you can find out about other online
business related events and chats that are not hosted by the site
but elsewhere. While the site does not say it is specifically reporting
on the technical industry, that is the category nearly all the mentioned
companies fall into. Perhaps this is because the tech industry as
a whole has had a chaotic past couple of months.
The site seems to project a negative outlook on the stock market and
feels like it is striving to do its part to maintain the stock markets
current low state. I suppose they are trying to grab the audience
that is more interested in hearing about financial downfall and humbled
CEOs than where to invest their money. For the overall tone is that
everything is falling apart and they are holding on to watch the destruction
with a sick sort of amusement. In some ways it is hard to imagine
who would want to read about the downfall of stocks presented in the
tone of a thrilled spectator watching a car crash. And then, I remember
how our natural tendency is to slow down and gawk as we pass carnage
on the side of the road.
This site feeds the same sort of urge that places like fuckedcompany.com
do for those who want to take part in the destruction of once promising
companies. The main difference is the losses are talked about mostly
in terms of stock prices. I am guessing this negative attitude is
new, and beforehand when the stock market was fairing well it was
building up the very same companies it is now tearing down. I would
not have been surprised if they were in fact creating an exaggerated
hype around some companies just as it seems to be brutally, and perhaps
unnecessarily, harsh. People following the site may have seen companies
and the men behind them raised to god like levels, and are now reveling
in their being reduced to mortal status.
While I cannot argue that stocks that once seemed very powerful in
the tech industry are now tumbling (along with many dot coms who were
valued way above their earnings, bringing down many other companies
in their wake), many other sites which focus on investing and business
do not have such a negative tone. Sites like thefool.com report on
many of the businesses that are doing poorly but also talks about
what is going well, and offers advice and suggestions regarding what
is good to invest in. With thestree.com the impression is that the
whole world is falling into economic ruin, and so all we can do is
treat it like a game, mock misery, and not invest any more money.
What best summed up the mood of the page was the line:
"The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index hasn't been quite as
volatile, but the day is still young."
This site latches on to the apparent blood thirst of its viewers
and tries to keep them glued to their seats with the promise and expectation
of financial carnage.
I think that this sort of news has an audience mostly among those
who were perhaps a bit cynical towards the market, and didn't end
up losing a lot of money themselves. For anyone taking a big hit would
most likely not find amusement in this site. It almost feels like
the tabloid of the financial world with how extreme its focus is.
Reading the articles themselves grows painful, though, as lists of
companies are shot off and then one actual sentence of commentary
is tacked on at the end. I am thinking that if this is the attitude
and writing style the site always has, then it might not be able to
sustain an audience for it will be dismissed less as a balanced source
of financial information and more as a convergence of sensationalist
news.
The page seems to be fairly short sighted. It feels as though it is
unable to see beyond the immediate changes and status of a company
and makes almost no mention of long-term patterns or plans which a
company might hold. It thrives of immediate results and current states,
and gives almost no indication of whether these patterns are expected
to be long or short term, or how shifts fit into a companies bigger
plan or long term business model. This short sightedness is a bit
insulting for it appears to assume that out of context numbers and
information are all that a reader really wants or would understand,
and that these broader issues do not come up. It also makes the page
less useful as readers don't get any real insight into what actions
they should take with their money to have some sort of payoff a few
months or years down the line.