TheCorporateCounsel.net

July 18, 2014

Did He Just Tweet That? SEC Commissioner Gallagher Has a Handle

A while back, I was surprised to discover that SEC Commissioner Dan Gallagher has his own Twitter account. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. In fact, I am all for it. I was just surprised because too many in the business world – and the government – are a tad bit paranoid about social media. He’s been on Twitter since last October and has tweeted 99 times. The Commissioner follows no one and has just under 1000 followers. Here’s a recent tweet as a sample:

Meanwhile, SEC Commissioner Piwowar delivered a speech defending the SEC’s regulatory turf – see this article entitled “An SEC Commissioner Just Gave The Most Aggressive Speech On Financial Regulation Ever.” See this related Reuters article and Bloomberg article

Social Media: Seeking Alpha Wins Court Case to Keep Contributors Anonymous

This note posted on Seeking Alpha’s site brings us the news that the NY Supreme Court dismissed a case seeking to compel Seeking Alpha to reveal the identity of a pseudonymous contributor who criticized a company and its management. Afterwards, Q4 ran this blog, providing full details about the case and post-case remarks from Seeking Alpha’s CEO.

For those that don’t know Seeking Alpha, it is an important site for you to familiarize yourself with as many independent analysts, professional investors and retail investors share insights & opinions there about investing in specific companies. Folks that post – known as a “contributor” – can do so anonymously or they can choose to identify themselves (and they get paid for their contributions if they reach a certain number of views). And companies can even participate themselves in the forums, although I’m not sure if any actually do like they do on StockTwits. The primary difference between Seeking Alpha & StockTwits is that Seeking Alpha has long-form content, whereas StockTwits has very short pieces (limit of 140 characters like a tweet). Each platform has millions of users as noted in this recent academic study

Here’s an interesting blog from Q4 entitled “Top 3 Ways to Manage Activist Shareholders on Social Media“…

Poll: Do You Use Snapchat?

This Akin Gump blog from last year describes how traders on Wall Street are obsessed with Snapchat. This led me to the idea of conducting this poll about how many readers of this blog use that app:

survey software

– Broc Romanek