Filed under: Blogs, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Apple Inc (AAPL), About the stock bloggers, Short stories, Next big thing, Scandals, Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), Media World, Technology

It was just an average Wednesday night for me-researching potential stock plays, working on some blog posts and catching up on many overdue emails, all to further my goal of becoming Cramer 2.0-when I saw a post on EliteTrader.com that linked to The Smoking Gun exposing Governor Spitzer’s call girl “Kristen” as 22-year-old Ashley Alexandra Dupre. Apparently, Kristen was/is her professional name. Always one to jump when opportunity knocks, I raced to dig up everything I could on Ms. Dupre to post on my blog and break some news of my own. What happened next might or might not blow your mind.

Several websites had already linked to her MySpace profile (owned by News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) so I went there and grabbed her photos to add to my story. The other sites had used the photos, too, but the pictures were all tiny and spread out over multiple pages (no doubt to increase their hits and subsequently their Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) ads, so I saw opportunity in providing them all on one page just as they were. But I didn’t stop there.

I also searched other social networks like Facebook and bingo, she had a profile there! That would be “my exclusive.” A few more clicks and the post was published. Within minutes, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has indexed my article and while I was late to the party, my “Facebook Exclusive” made my story unique and the hits tumbled in. I’m used to 200-ish visitors/hour, but thanks to this one simple post, 1,500 people visited my site within the first 45 minutes. And that’s when things got interesting.Apparently, Ms. Dupre has a Facebook group supporting her and they also linked to my post. Nice! But then, can you believe that Ms. Dupre herself commented saying “meh..timothy has a lack of writing talent..thestreet.com is better” I couldn’t stop laughing-the most famous call girl in the world right now has just put me down! Luckily, I don’t get offended (and as you’ve read in this article, I don’t judge people either). I posted back “LOL, this is too funny!” We went back and forth for a little while-she made fun of my magazine cover on my profile and I told her she needs to make more than a few grand off this-and then onto some off-the-record private messaging, but I dutifully posted the on-the-record chat on my blog (click HERE to see it all)

Just a few hours and over 10,000 visitors later, the only question that remains is was that the real Ms. Dupre? I’d like to believe, but there’s really no way to tell. More importantly, this little incident exemplifies the future of journalism and it’s why giants like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS), Viacom (NYSE: VIA.B) and maybe even Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) should truly recognize the power of blogging and social networking.

Timothy Sykes writes the blog timothysykes.com, is a former hedge fund manager, star of the TV show Wall Street Warriors and author of the book, An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 11:12 am and is filed under Stocks News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.