Hitwise, a great blog that talks about general web traffic patterns, had an interesting post this morning about Heelys the company that makes those shoes that have built in wheels. I remember seeing those shoes years ago, but only recently have I started to see them everywhere. The company went public this week and the stock did very well. It was priced at $21 a share, but opened at $38…one of the best IPO performances of the year.
Anyway this post with it’s exploration into why Hanleys was getting so many searches over the last month, really got me thinking. Ultimately Hitwise determined that the boom in search traffic was not related to the hot IPO, but instead to the fact that Heelys are a hot holiday gift item. So I’m wondering if more shopping is done online, which means that sales can be tracked in almost real time with website statistics, could one invest more wisely in retail related companies by closely monitoring web stats? I’m sure smart money is already actively doing this, but why haven’t I heard more about this? It seems really straight forward…Sign up for Hitwise (I’ve heard it’s fairly expensive, over $5-$10k a month), and then setup some keyword monitoring reports on items related to stocks you may or may not want to invest in. If the numbers look good, maybe way better than last year or better than expected, then buy (or worse, then sell). Presumably, you’d know way before most who would rely on company numbers or retail interviews.
I was fortunate enough to meet Jeff Stewart a few weeks ago, a successful New York serial entrepreneur and founder of monitor110.com, a company that scours the web to find relevant news before it hits the wires. They are providing enormous value to big traders, where knowing first can be worth billions. I think this is a fantastic service, but it’s still not quite what I’m talking about above.
I’d love to find a way to estimate sales numbers based on search numbers/web traffic trends. I bet it’s easier than you think.
In all, U.S. retailers estimate that 1.4 million to 1.5 million Wiis will be sold by Dec. 25, roughly twice as many as the PS3. I believe it….I went to the Nintendo store on Sat and it was PACKED with people laughing and having fun.
Wii! Wii! Wii! This Holiday Season Has Been a Wild Ride for Nintendo - WSJ.com
Bloomberg has some development plans for the Big Apple to prepare for Manhattan to grow from 8.2M people to 9.5M over the next 25 years, including new subway lines and major infrastructure improvement. Seems like there are some great real estate investment opportunities out there still, all those people have to live somewhere!
The Big Apple, Getting Bigger, Sets New Goals - WSJ.com
Jason Calacanis (great blog by the way) takes a look at what sort of characteristics make up an “out there person,” or really the initiators of society as I see it, both within organizations or as entrepreneurs. I would like to think that I exhibit some of these very characteristics. They include:
- Fast followers
- More flexible
- Open communicators
- Aspire to greatness
- Looking for new, innovative ideas
- In short – your future leaders
And he adds:
- #7 Passionate
- #8 Lovers of intelligent debate
- #9 Don’t take themselves to seriously
You’re certainly going to need all of these characteristics to really overcome hurdles and make things happen, so this list seems pretty straight forward, but it’s always interesting to see that no matter what field you’re in, the people like this are the ones really moving things forward.
It’s worth a read.
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It’s 55 degrees and sunny on December 11th! That is crazy and almost scary, but also makes for a great day to have lunch in the park. I’ve only been here for 3 months, but weather like this seems more like the norm. I’m still waiting for those long stretches of cold and wind, but we’ve only had a day or two of that so far. Either way, it’s great.
The biggest — and most risky — assumptions that people make when planning for the future…I’ve always assumed I would “work” forever simply because I’d find what is most fulfilling to me and stick with it. I guess that’s not always a possibility, and
The Retirement Lies We Tell Ourselves - WSJ.com
Despite horrible numbers announced last week, I still feel like Jamba Juice is a fantastic investment. The news that a billionaire investment guru owns 5.9% of the compay validates my opinion. Check it out, ticker: JMBA
Soros fund owns 5.14 percent of Jamba-SEC filing | Reuters.com
I’m sorry I’ve neglected this for so long, but it’s been busy and I’ve been holding off until I made a few changes to the site which took longer than I wanted.
I know that the majority of my readers know me, and are just reading to get some insight into what’s going on in my life, but I have a lot of other more nerdy things I want to put up on this blog. I also find an incredible amount of interesting news stories and links on a daily basis that I think others may find interesting, so I’ll be posting those here as well. I held off on posting these other ideas and links knowing that most of you aren’t really that interested in reading my other thoughts (Andrea). So what I’ve decided to do is offer separate sections of my blog. If you want to continue seeing everything I write about, just keep coming back to danputt.com or subscribing to the main rss feed (for those of you who have no idea what that is, I’ll explain in a minute). For those of you who just want to see the “personal” posts, then you can either subscribe to the personal rss feed or visit danputt.com/category/personal OR just click the personal tab up top. For those of you who are currently subscribing by email, I’ve set you up to just receive the personal posts from this site. If you want to sign up for everything, please signup for a new email subscription in the form on the right of the front page.
For the less technical of you out there, I encourage you to get into this “whole rss thing.” I’m an obsessive RSS user, utilizing it to check my favorite blogs in a tenth of the time it would take me to visit each site individually, to stay up to date on the news, stay up to date on my friends, even to watch for deals and download TV shows. I use google reader but you can use myahoo, bloglines, firefox, even Outlook or Internet Explorer. Pretty much any website that updates content regularly (celebrity gossip blogs especially Andrea) offer RSS feeds. I encourage you to read a little more about it below, and try it out.
http://rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_Feed
http://cravingideas.blogs.com/backinskinnyjeans/2006/09/how_to_explain_.html
I complain about spam in my gmail, but I see that I shouldn’t…It’s a miracle there isn’t more out there. I think th only real way to beat email spam is to have real “report spam” buttons that link up with an open source shared spam database, so we can
GigaOM » Spam is sucking life out of Email
I complain about spam in my gmail, but I see that I shouldn’t…It’s a miracle there isn’t more out there. I think th only real way to beat email spam is to have real “report spam” buttons that link up with an open source shared spam database, so we can
GigaOM » Spam is sucking life out of Email
