4 ms·
I don't deny this at all. That's the glory of capitalism! The problem I have is that I can't find a problem that I could do on the cheap legally. I'm heavily in
by brentr 18y ago
I don't deny this at all. That's the glory of capitalism! The problem I have is that I can't find a problem that I could do on the cheap legally. I'm heavily involved with finance and market data. I can think of numerous ways something like Bloomberg could be improved, but the costs are prohibitive when you consider all the data feeds. The only other idea I have managed to come up with is a Digg-like site with a social network aspect attached to it. The idea is people submit just like on Digg but they also make recommendations as to what would happen in the market. They then earn a credibility rating based on whether or not their prediction was accurate. The problem with that is this: I don't think there are enough people who would use it to make developing the site worth my time.
- rokhayakebe 18y agoMake it private and charge a hefty monthly fee to participate. Apparently in Wall Street scarcity and limited access is what makes people rich.
- brentr 18y agoThat's what I am trying to avoid. One of the problems I see with Bloomberg is that it costs $1500+/month/terminal. My idea involved the concept: data for the masses.
- furiouslol 18y agoThis would only work if your product gives the subscriber an edge over their competitors. They wouldn't pay for a product like Google Finance because it doesn't give them an edge. Your plan would work for Monitor110 if the product actually worked.
- sutro 18y agoSounds like a pretty good idea. You should go for it.
- furiouslol 18y agoTell that to the boys over at Dealbreaker. They've been waiting for a Bloomberg killer for eons now. But i don't think it'll be easy to build a Bloomberg killer because the main reason why Bloomberg is so popular in the financial circles is that it provides breaking news and lots of historical financial data that you won't find elsewhere. So it is not much of a technology edge than a content edge. As for the Digg-like site, you are right in saying there would not be enough people who would use it. I would think most online investors are those who thrash talk on Yahoo Finance boards. A site like yours would require input from intelligent investors, which unfortunately form a small subset of the online investing community. Hence the lack of scale may render this idea ineffective.
- gaius 18y agoI used to work for Bloomberg's biggest rival, and I know exactly why they are so popular: they understand their end users. RivalCorp doesn't really get it at all. R (as we'll call them) tries to sell to a bank's IT department, and Bloomberg tries to end-run IT and sell to the traders (guess who has the most power in an investment bank). R spent years and hundreds of millions retrofitting TCP/IP onto everything (which traders simply don't care about), Bloomberg spent that time and money setting up deals with tailors and wine merchants (I'm not kidding) for users of its terminals. They made their users feel like insiders, a privileged elite, which is something all bankers crave. Plus, Bloomberg terminals are sexy. They look like something out of Star Trek. R terminals looked like beige-box PCs. Sure there are technological reasons too, but Bloomberg's success is cultural first and foremost.
- furiouslol 18y agoThat's very true. I'm guessing you used to work for ThomsonReuters/Telerate. Monitor110 tried to be the Bloomberg killer and they had the street cred to pull it off. But they lack the content that traders want. So at the end of the day, content is one of the most key ingredients of any Bloomberg killer.