Top Stock Investing 2.0 Sites
I have taken a keen interest in Web 2.0 and the powerful network effect that many of these new web sites are attempting to generating. Since I’m a stock investing blogger, I have been watching how this new online development is effecting the investment landscape. Web 2.0 is finally starting to have an impact on stock investing sites, so I decided to research the competitors in this space.
Web 2.0 sites “…emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.” Tim O’Reilly recently noted, “This is what I’ve elsewhere called ‘harnessing collective intelligence.’”
Many Web 2.0 sites have the potential to harness the network effect that occurs when a service becomes more valuable to its users the more other users utilize it. In terms of business and investing, the network effect provides one of the most powerful and durable competitive advantages.
I have been trying to harness this network effect of Web 2.0 with my recent Value Investing News project. To better address my value investing community niche, I decided to research the top Investing 2.0 sites. I first spotted the “Investing 2.0″ phrase at TechCrunch. Over the past year, TechCrunch has reviewed three investing 2.0 sites, including Stockpickr, Motley Fool Caps, and Zecco. Based on those stories, the comments on those stories, and my own research, I pulled together the following list of top stock investing 2.0 sites.
Top Stock Investing 2.0 Sites
| Site Name | Alexa Ranking | PageRank |
|---|---|---|
| The Motley Fool Caps | 1,330 | 4 |
| Stockpickr | 30,368 | 5 |
| Marketocracy | 44,833 | 6 |
| Zecco | 46,889 | 4 |
| SocialPicks | 60,170 | 5 |
| StockFriend | 64,648 | 3 |
| Predict Wall Street | 95,774 | 4 |
| StockTickr | 118,473 | 5 |
| ValueWiki | 136,198 | 3 |
| Value Investing News | 197,150 | 4 |
| Feed The Bull | 222,323 | 4 |
| DigStock | 254,791 | 5 |
| BullPoo.com | 277,898 | 4 |
| StokBlogs | 602,505 | 4 |
| TradeKing | 751,149 | 5 |
| Worthio | 1,040,557 | 0 |
| InvestorFace | 2,571,903 | 0 |
The Top Stock Investing 2.0 Sites list is sorted by Alexa Traffic Ranking. I know that the Alexa Ranking can be gamed and is only based on the web surfing habits of its toolbar users. Therefore, I’ve also included Google PageRank scores to also provide an indicator of how influential each site is on the web. Please let me know if I have missed any sites. I may update the above table with additional metrics and revised statistics in the future.
The top Investing 2.0 site on the list is Motley Fool Caps. However, the Alexa Traffic Ranking for Motley Fool Caps, which is on subdomain caps.fool.com, includes all the traffic for the fool.com domain name as well. Alexa captures all the traffic on a domain and does not break out subdomain statistics. Basically, this means that the new Stockpickr site could in fact be the king of the Investing 2.0 hill.
I am very happy that my niche social bookmarking site, Value Investing News, has come in tenth place. The site has only been running for about four months, has no financial backing, no professional programming talent, and focuses on likely the smallest online investment community, value investors. Given all those handicaps, a top ten ranking between ValueWiki and Feed the Bull is great.
I feel that many of the stock picking sites will eventually run into trouble, even though right now many of them contain excellent discussions. Herd mentality and stock pumping could really hurt members of those sites. Social bookmarking sites that focus on news and commentary will likely have more longevity. At least that is what I hope, since Value Investing News is primarily a social bookmarking site focused on linking to high quality investment analysis.
What are you favorite Investing 2.0 sites? I of course love Value Investing News (user name: George). You can also find me on Motley Fool Caps, Stockpickr, and Marketocracy. Feel free to share your user names and profiles on these sites with the rest of the Fat Pitch Financials community by leaving a comment below.
Useful Links:
Great post. I’ve added a link to the Alexa chart of today with a Stockpickr/Marketocracy/ Zecco comparission. http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....kpickr.com
As you can see we’re tracking alongside Stockpickr since the past few weeks and have passed Marketocracy.
Oh .. disclosure: I’m the COO of Zecco
Motley Fool’s CAPS and Stockpickr for me. CAPS, surprisingly, hasn’t deteriorated to room full of pump and dump people, but like you I fear it’ll get there eventually… you can already see plenty of
Motley Fool’s CAPS and Stockpickr for me. CAPS, surprisingly, hasn’t deteriorated to room full of pump and dump people, but like you I fear it’ll get there eventually… you can already see plenty of (sub) 20 rating people giving one liner recommendations to companies. Still it’s one of the best (and imo only good) feature from Motley Fool these days. Let’s hope they don’t turn it all into a subscription service.
No offense to Zecco, but there’s not much of a community there yet, at least not one I can find anyway… and so far it’s not exactly easy to navigate. Then again it’s not like a user base can be created out of thin air, so probably will take time.
WSJ had an article awhile back on a few of those listed, CAPS, Zecco, TradeKing’s blogs etc. Surprise I never found Marketocracy before.. gonna check that out :)
edit: looks like using the arrow key (ala html one) cuts off the post. woops.
Cap, thanks sharing your favorite investing 2.0 sites.
What is your Fool Caps user name? I’ll look you up next time I’m on Caps.
What a great honor it is to be on this list and to be ranked number 11. Our alexa ranking must have changed, however, since you created this list as we are ranked 174,651. I am a huge fan of your Value Investing site by the way, you have a lot of great content. Keep up the work.
Hi this is a great site I had definitely looked into. I was browsing the websites you have listed in the ranks and http://www.Stockfriend.com has became one of the top sites I found was informative in many aspects of investment. Thanks again for your recommendations and keep updating! Has anyone tried out http://www.stockfriend. com? Free tshirts caught my attention just for wanting to invest! Great!
well, not exactly investment but the new “game” from stocknewsgame.com can teach you a lesson or two in fundamental analysis.
http://www.Gujjubulls.com
alexa ranking 4,21,000.
India rank 11,525.
Although the Web sites listed above have their merits of being Web 2.0, their collaboration capability in research is limited - most of them take the easy way and they don’t provide in-depth research and extensive collaboration on industries or companies. That’s what I am trying to accomplish with my Web site http://www.HometownStocks.com. Under a valuation framework, users can collaborate and turn a company top-down, inside-out.