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Dominic Jones

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I just posted “NASDAQ makes StockTwits even more relevant to IR” http://ping.fm/Z6VNj

1 week ago

October 26, 2009
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1 week ago

October 26, 2009
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I just posted “Loose lips, loose morals, and outdated disclosure practices” http://ping.fm/qJnP7

2 weeks ago

October 22, 2009
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I just posted “SEC should focus on access in “notice & access”” http://ping.fm/j3tiG

3 weeks ago

October 16, 2009
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I just posted “Google brings transparency to the earnings call question queue” http://ping.fm/2RprM

3 weeks ago

October 15, 2009
link Online annual reports: will we ever get them right?

PEOPLE like me have been promoting online annual report best practices for almost a decade now, but the message mostly isn’t getting through.

According to the 2009 Nexxar online annual report…

1 month ago

September 23, 2009
link Facebook Pages and Investor Relations

FACEBOOK, by virtue of its 300 million strong user base and built-in viral marketing features, is an appealing target for investor relations officers who want to market their companies to a wider…

1 month ago

September 22, 2009
link Thomson Reuters buying Hugin is bad news for European IR and investors

Early this morning, I posted the following on the IR Web Report Bits blog. I normally would not cross post items like this because IR Web Report is usually reserved for less personal and more…

1 month ago

September 21, 2009
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That cloud thing in the drawing used to be Business Wire. Now made redundant by machines.

A picture named schema.gif

1. The Writer gets an idea.

2. He or she enters it into the authoring tool, saves, it goes to a file, a feed.

3. The authoring software sends an Update ping to the Cloud (which is just a bit of software running on EC2).

4. The Cloud checks to see if anyone is subscribing to the Writer, and finds that indeed the Aggregator is.

5. He updated! says the Cloud to the Aggregator.

6. The aggregator then reads the feed, finds the new stuff and informs the Reader.

All this happened in less than a second!

That’s what they call Real-time.

The illustration and explanation are big news. RSS is no longer just a pull technology. It now has push capabilities.

That means you can distribute market-moving releases via RSS in near real time to all subscribers, be they Joe Investor, Yahoo! Finance, Bloomberg or Fidelity — and they all get it at the same time.

That’s kinda what the PR wire services claimed to do but never could actually deliver. Now they’ve been made redundant by a bit of software and a rented Amazon.com server. Serves them right, I say, because they should’ve distributed mandatory releases free of charge a long time ago.

RSSCloud isn’t the only technology that’s transforming RSS into a real-time push technology. There’s also the Google-backed Pubsubhubbub and FriendFeed’s SUP (which is now Facebook’s, I suppose).

It doesn’t matter really which technology prevails, the results are the same. Your RSS/Atom feeds are your newswire and it’s time to give them the attention they deserve. (Don’t be the next Dell)

I hope that Thomson Reuters, Shareholder.com, SNL Financial, Investis and all the other IR website hosts will act as quickly adopt real-time push for their clients’ feeds just like Wordpress did at the weekend.

Posted via web from IR Web Report in Brief

2 months ago

September 8, 2009
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How honest were IROs in this survey?

How important are retail investors to the investor mix of your company?

Absolutely essential  9.3%
                             
Very important  21.6%
                             
Somewhat important  29.4%
                             
Not very important  31.4%
                             
Not important at all  8.3%
                             

 

The results are based on a survey of Shareholder.com clients by Rivel Research. It’s not clear how many actually answered the survey (204 *recipients* is mentioned), but the real question is did the respondents tell the truth?

The incentive here is for IROs to overstate the importance of retail investors. It’s never a good thing for an IRO to say *any* investor is not important, and they know that.

So I’m included to read the results at 30% think retail matters and 70% don’t really care.

Posted via web from IR Web Report in Brief

2 months ago

September 3, 2009
link Dell’s earnings web leak offers 3 lessons for all IROs

WHEN Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) accidentally posted earnings information on the web prior to their official announcement last week, it was a little like seeing a poster child for online disclosure fall…

2 months ago

September 1, 2009
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Which social networks have been mentioned most on earnings calls?

Using the Seeking Alpha transcript database, I thought it would be fun to see at how many companies’ earnings calls various social networks have been mentioned by executives or analysts.

This is by no means scientific, but here are the results anyway:

  • Facebook — 160 companies
  • MySpace — 125 companies
  • Twitter — 45 companies
  • Bebo — 13 companies
  • LinkedIn —10 companies

You can find lots of interesting info in the transcripts. Like did you know that the first time Facebook was mentioned on an earnings call was February 2006? You can see the precise context by following this link.

Interesting, huh?

Posted via web from IR Web Report in Brief

2 months ago

September 1, 2009
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Getting stock information on WolframAlpha

I tweeted about this last week. This video provides a quick tour of how the new WolframAlpha search engine is using financial data from Xignite.

Posted via web from IR Web Report in Brief

2 months ago

September 1, 2009
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Quotable: The Board Blog: Social Networking—Do You Really Care What I’m Doing?

I joked about Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn in the opening but what I’m about to say is very serious. Every director needs to know about the impact that these networks will have on their business. And this impact can be positive or negative. It may well become a major reason why boards will need to make sure they have a blend of skill sets and are diverse about knowing how our world is evolving and their strategic initiatives need to change along with it.

I think he hits the nail on the head with “our world is evolving.”

Posted via web from IR Web Report in Brief

2 months ago

August 31, 2009
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How to Quickly View Online Excel Files in Google Spreadsheets

I recently relocated my office 3,000 miles and had to rely on a new netbook and an iPhone for all of my work needs while my main machine was in transit.  Neither the netbook nor the iPhone had Excel installed on them, which was a problem since Excel files are common on the websites I review. I didn’t want to take chances installing any additional software on my netbook or paying for an iPhone app. I just wanted something light and easy to use, preferably online.

 While looking for a solution, I discovered an easy way to convert any Excel file on the web into a Google Spreadsheet without having to manually upload the file to Google.  You simply paste the URL of the Excel file you want to view after the following Google Spreadsheet URL:

 http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?url=  It’s a good idea to bookmark the above link so you have easy access to it the next time you encounter an Excel file online.

 So if you want to view the Excel file of Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) latest XBRL filing with the SEC, which is located here:  http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312509163845/Financial_Report.xls

 You just paste the SEC URL for the file at the end of the Google Spreadsheets link, like this:  http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?url=http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312509163845/Financial_Report.xls

 If you click on the above link, you’ll be prompted to log-in to your Google account before seeing the Excel file as a Google spreadsheet. It works really fast.  Unfortunately, you have to manually paste in the URL of the Excel file you want to view each time. I looked around for a Firefox browser plug-in that would open Excel files in Google Spreadsheets automatically, but couldn’t find one.

 I’m back on my main machine now and don’t have any trouble opening and working with Excel locally, but I’m finding that I enjoy using Google Spreadsheets and storing files in the cloud where I can access them later on any of my devices.  I’m sure there are other uses for this simple hack. You could, for example, automatically create alternative Google Spreadsheet links for any file on your site that has a .xls file extension. Investors and others who don’t have access to Excel because they’re on the road or don’t have Excel installed can use the alternate Google Spreadsheet links instead of the Excel files.

 I’m surprised no one in the investor relations website space is doing this yet. Though I’m sure there’ll now be a race to do this first.

Posted via email from IR Web Report in Brief

2 months ago

August 29, 2009