FeedTheBull is a new Denver startup that launched about two months ago. In a nutshell, this is yet another Digg clone that is focused on financial stuff. Well, it’s supposed to be focused on financial stuff, but many of the popular articles really aren’t.
Users post articles along with the related stock ticker, then tag them up. Other users vote them up or down. The home page features to top articles, yada, yada. You know the drill.
I hope they come up with something else, because we can already do exactly that on Digg’s business and finance area.
To be fair, this seems like a fairly well executed knock off. It’s got all the bells and whistles like RSS feeds, discussion, voting, the ability to see who’s voting for stuff, add them as buddies, and so on.
I asked founder Ron Coleman why I wouldn’t just use Digg. Here’s what Ron had to say:
Yes, we are similar to Digg.com in that we are a social aggregator, except that we are dedicated to the financial community and people that are interested in the stock market. Digg has grown its base outside of tech, but it is still predominately a tech forum. Most people that I come across in the financial world are not even aware of sites such as these, it is more of a site that tech guys go to, and I want to change that. – Founder Ron Coleman
If you play with the site like I did, you will agree that the team behind FeedTheBull is obviously talented. Hopefully they can find a real differentiator and make this thing fly. I think that assuming that the financial community will never hear about Digg is a poor plan. Ron also has some other ideas:
We are getting ready to launch a simulation stock trading competition for our members, to use the information that they find and share on the site. This will allow the bull community to put into practice their ideas with a $100,000 portfolio and compete against the rest of the community. – Founder Ron Coleman
FeedTheBull needs some more fresh ideas. Perhaps orienting it more around the ticker (like this) while retaining the social aggregation focus it might make it more interesting to me. Another idea would be to allow the community to declare themselves as stockholders, allowing members to socialize around the stocks they own. Another minor point is that they could easily optimize the look of the site – right now they wasting a huge part of the page display with their enormous logo followed by ads. Right now, I don’t get to see any content until I’m in the bottom inch of my display.
If you’re into financial research, give FeedTheBull a shot and send them some feedback. The founders seem very open to going where the users lead them. I’m sure they’d appreciate your insight.
Hi David,
You have a good point and I agree with a lot of the items that you said, specifically around the logo. I mentioned this to them and they said that they are in the process of a redesign of the site when they launch the competition. You also mentioned that you played around on the site, and from what I can tell from reading your article I don’t think you did. First, you can not vote down articles, so thats false. Maybe its something they should add, but currentlly there is not the ability. Second, the site is just that… a start up. When I talked to the guys about some link trades, and also saw there statistics on alexa.com I was impressed. I don’t know any sites that have come in the top 100,000 daily average in less than 2 months as these guys have. The marketing they have put into the site is awesome, I found the site from myspace, and found myself back most days. Eventually I started dialog with Ron and was excited to hear what they have in line. They have big ideas, and they are coming through slowly. Give them some credit. How many hits did your site get after 2 months?
Here’s my profile.
Right now I’m listed as #50 on the “top users” list. Looks like there are 4 or 5 people who have voted on more than a few articles.
Alexa shows FeedTheBull as somewhere around #459,000 as of today. Of course, the problems with Alexa are well documented.
I agree that if these guys can do something other than just digg-like stuff, there should be a market there. They are clearly good at the tech, and need to find their calling. I’m hopeful.
Nice write-up, and thanks for the write up on us. FeedtheBull is really young and the new design with smaller graphics, and such is just around the corner. If you are really interested I guess you can e-mail and I can show you a preview. We have some great things in mind, but we’re a small team with lots of big ideas. I truly ask anyone with ideas to hit us up and we’ll do everything we can to accomodate.
I had a rush of nostalgia when I saw they are using a 2004-era RSS icon. This was the one made famous by the RSS looks like ASS bug. There’s a reason for the new word-less icon!
…ok, not the most serious of points! (But I agree that the world doesn’t need another digg clone…they need to find a better special sauce.)
It has been awhile since this article was published. Not sure if anyone has recently viewed FeedTheBull. It has come a long way in the last 8 months.
The site does look quite a bit better!