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.
