Social News Sites

1. Tip’d — “A community for financial news, ideas, and tips.” Categories include business, currencies, economy, personal finance, stocks, and more. Tip’d has the largest userbase of any financial social news site, by far, so if you only have time for one, it should probably be this one. (Disclosure: Bankling management has an ownership interest in Tip’d.)
2. FeedTheBull — “Financial and stock market news with a voice.” Stories tagged with stock symbols include the stock’s current trading price. The volume of comments makes for lively discussion on many stories. FTB’s bullish vote button is definitely our favorite.
3. Value Investing News — “Investor powered stock market news.” Categories include bonds, shareholder activism, stock analysis, and of course value investing. VIN also features a robust stock screener from Zacks.com. Members of VIN share in the site’s Adsense revenue.
4. StockTwits — “Real investors. Real ideas. Real time.” StockTwits uses the power of Twitter to offer real-time commentary on stocks. Sign-up is easy. All you need is a Twitter account and an interest in at least one stock. A Firefox extension makes StockTwits more accessible from Twitter. Also features candlestick performance charts on every stock page.
5. PF Buzz — “The best money and finance articles.” Categories include business, career, frugality, financial planning, investing, taxes, and more. The drawback to PF Buzz is that it seems only one new story hits the frontpage on average; also, their forums are dead. But we love their “Top Users” feature on the sidebar.

Social Networking & Stock Picking Sites

6. Motley Fool CAPS — “Investors helping investors beat the market.” (Actually, at Bankling, we’re usually not fans of trying to beat the market. Hey, we’re big Bogleheads over here!) That said, CAPS analyzes individual stocks by polling its users as to whether the stock will outperform the S&P 500 or not. Member commentary on each stock is also available on each stock page.
7. SocialPicks — “Invest smarter together.” At SocialPicks, users can share investment ideas and track peers’ investment performance. Members establish a credible stock investor identity and are able to view or join select investor groups, such as Mad Money, Green Investments, or Value Investors, to name a few.
8. Stockpickr — “The stock idea network.” Users can compare their stock portfolios to Wall Street pros like Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, and George Soros. Individual stock pages display standard stock data as well as a list of investor portfolios that currently hold the stock and recommendations of similar stocks.
9. Wikinvest — “Investing simplified.” A Wiki for investing. Wikinvest has thousands of user-generated content on investing concepts and publicly traded companies. Wikinvest offers WikiCharts, which are stock performance charts that contain user-generated annotations.
10. Covestor — “Make money with Covestor’s proven investors.” At Covester, users can follow the real trades of other members. Individual investors can follow the moves of professional traders and even invest their money in a Covestor account that will replicate the trading portfolio moves of favorite pros. A rankings page shows the best performing member portfolios.

Let’s be clear about one thing though: while peer-to-peer lending sites like Kiva and informational sites like Tip’d cater to all sorts of investors–especially the diversified, buy-and-hold, long-term-view kind–Twitter’s very nature attracts bursty, instantaneous, and fleeting content. And that means, buy-and-hold investors might not find these new platforms interesting. Day traders, on the other hand, seem to be flocking to them.

The question is, which platform should you make your home? With most social media channels, you find a winner-take-all situation. (Why sign up at register at ConnectU, when everyone’s already signed up at Facebook?) So let’s take a look at these two platforms head-to-head, and see which is likely to come out the winner.

Twiticker

Twiticker’s byline is “What are the markets doing?” The site’s homepage features the latest finance-related tweets, though I can’t tell what kind of engine/algorithm they’re using to find and sort the tweets. My impressions of the site are positive, however I can’t help but feel like it’s an Alpha product, not quite ready for primetime. In fairness, Twiticker is promising a revamp in the near future: “We are very excited to announce that Doug Williams has joined Twiticker.com as President. Doug will move Twiticker from an aggregator of stock information into a more robust and consumable hub of financial data. Doug will bring his twelve years of development experience to the team where he will lead business and functional growth.”

• Traffic: A report from Compete.com shows about 1,000 monthly unique visitors. Ouch.
• Press: A Google search brings up coverage from Tweetcrunch and not a whole lot else.
• Features: The site seems like it’s 90% finished, but still needs a little polishing.

StockTwits

Stocktwits launched with greater fanfare, possibly due to co-founder Howard Lindzon’s reputation built at Wallstrip. The site describes itself as “an open, community-powered investment idea and information service. You can think of it as Bloomberg for the little guy and gal. Eavesdrop on what traders and investors are talking about RIGHT NOW or contribute to the conversation and build your reputation and following as a savvy market wizard.”

• Traffic: A report from Compete.com shows about 40,000 monthly unique visitors. Not huge yet, but growing, and not exponentially lower than the traffic levels seen at social finance plays Tip’d and Stockpickr, which have achieved critical mass. (Disclosure: Bankling management has an ownership interest in Tip’d.) In any case, the traffic level is about 3,900% higher than that of Twiticker.
• Press: StockTwits came out with an impressive PR-blitz last Fall. Coverage on WSJ’s The Wallet, NYT’s Bits Blog and even Mashable.
• Features: StockTwits was able to raise $800k in funding, and it looks like they’re making that go far in terms of development. The site is very polished and usable, and they even have a “Digg-style” user-request application, so it’s likely the most coveted feature requests will get implemented in the future.

So which platform should you use?

If I were a betting man, I’d say StockTwits is likely to get to 50,000 users first… and whichever service gets to 50k first will probably get to 500,000 users first… you get the picture. Of course, should Twitter enter this space with an in-house app, they could monopolize the space easily, but I don’t see that as a high probability. For now, I’d say if you’re going to sign up at only one, you’ll probably want to check StockTwits out first.