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Can social media impact the stock market? I think so

Submitted by: steve gonzalez on Dec 11, 2009 at 1:30 am Tagged with: Facebook, socialmedia, stockmarket Source: steve gonzalez

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”-Bill Gates

In the past year we have seen the stock market crumble and the social networking world flourish. There has not been any real correlation between the two as of yet but in the next few years we can expect to see the both unite. Popular social networks like facebook,twitter and linkedin have been in less than transparent conversations about possible IPO’s(initial public offering). Which is odd because the web 2.0 generation does come off as a show all generation.

Below is a video of Mark Z and as you can see he goes into much detail about the product but when asked about financials he is very brief. Many believe social networks have yet to prove themselves as real monetizable businesses and are afraid to show what there financial infrastructure really look's like.

Facebook’s real success came after they opened up their platform to 3rd party developers the same can be accomplished by opening up their financial infrastructure to their shareholders. If facebook can allow users to purchase their stock from their dashboard they can effectively change the way shareholders interact with companies and essentially create "social shareholders".

If you could remember the buzz created when facebook launched vanity url's you could see how critical social engagement is. Within 15 minutes of the addresses becoming available, over a half million users had signed them up. The number hit over 10 million within five days. Stock shares are very different from vanity url’s but the same craze can happen and quite possibly create the biggest IPO in history. Think 300 million people and there friends willing to invest in what consumes hours of their day. The question to ask is what happens when the speculation of a company going public goes viral this could be our first look at how much social media could impact the stock market. The future for the stock market may not be in the hands of wall street insiders but may be in the pulse of “Social Shareholders”

(This is the stock market after 300 million people and their friends invest)

Cheers,

@SteveGonzalez