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In my report, I have listed my experience about interacting on Newsgroups and stock bulletin boards. I will review the emotions and thoughts that I experienced in posting messages on threads that I follow. In the beginning not only was I new to the internet but using computers was a whole new experience for me. I was amazed and awestruck at the amount of information that was available to somebody on the internet. After a year on the internet, I am still amazed by the size and growth of the internet.
I started to read newsgroups for stock research. I have been investing for a number of years and before this tremendous growth of the internet came along, the only way to obtain information on companies was from your stockbroker, newspapers, magazines, books, and stock newsletters. In the investment market, timing is crucial and the options listed earlier are archaic compared to the speed of the internet. These options are also limited in content and choice of companies. In the newsgroups, if you're looking for information about a certain company and its not listed, you can start a new thread. Hopefully, there are other people interested in your stock and you be able to start a long and interesting thread.
I use Netscape as my browser and I selected the thread based upon stocks that I was interested in. I also select a certain thread based upon the initial posting. If the person who starts the thread has good insight and facts about a certain company, many other people will start to ask questions and other people will come to the thread to read, ask and answer questions regarding other people's postings. In the beginning of my internet use, I didn't know much about computers. So I was actually copying information by hand. I would have these notebooks full of information that I obtained from the internet. When I first joined Silicon Investors, the website was not as developed as it is now. They now have a bookmark feature that will "bookmark" certain threads that I want to follow. This bookmark feature also lets the user know if there are any new postings and how many there are. Since taking this class, I have learned how to cut and paste. This is a very valuable to have where you can easily save some text to your computer.
When I read the postings, I don't take the information as facts till I verify it through a reliable source. It would be silly to invest money in a stock that was being touted by an unknown source. Its nice to have some information to peak your interests enough for you to do an investigation into a certain stock but to read a posting and purchase some stock would be foolish. There are people out there that post messages about a certain stock because they are excited about it and they are the "cheerleaders" of a certain stock thread. There are also some people that play the "short" side of stocks, they are called "shorters". They are investing money in companies that they think will go down in value. They are the ones that post messages of doom for certain stocks they are interested in. They're comments are usually negative. The shorters also love to "flame" the cheerleaders. Then the cheerleaders flame the shorters back. Most threads that are lengthy usually have a set of people, whose main contribution is just flaming each other back and forth. There is also a set of people that are "lurkers", meaning all they do is read the threads. They don't participate in the discussion of a certain stock or thread. I believe that the majority of the people are lurkers. Take for instance, Silicon Investors, they have 127,000 members and countless others that enter the website as visitors. The majority are not posting but just lurking. For a stock thread, this is a good thing because people will be able to obtain information or they could also gain a different insight about a certain stock. If any of these lurkers like the stock, then they will buy some shares which could possibly send the stock's price higher.
In the beginning, other people would post messages with words like, flaming, spamming. I didn't know what they meant but after reading a few messages, I had some clues to the meanings. There were other newbies to the web that had more guts than I did and asked what the meaning was certain terms. As time went by and many messages later, I was intrigued with the new slang language that was being used on the internet.
I noticed that a lot of people use quotes from other people when they are dissagreeing with another person's posting. Messages that flame other people also include quotes from original posting. I noticed that people use the alternating paragraph method with the << & >> captioning the original post or quote. The majority of the people put the quote first then follow with their oppinion or message.
When there isn't too much activity in a stock, sometimes the thread goes off on another tangeant. Most people stick to one subject in their messages. Some messages include multiple questions but at least it is about the same stock.
I noticed that flaming occurs when some people make remarks that others might be sensitive to. Some are intential and some aren't, just the wrong choice of words were used. Other people will flame somebody who just posted a flaming message. Because people aren't face to face and the person who they are trying to flame becomes just a faceless name not a human being. This dehumanizing makes people take liberties in ridiculing, chastising and harrassing others. It seems to me that people are more willing to challenge another person's opinion or ideas on the internet message boards than if they were physically together in the same room. I really don't believe that most of these people would do these things if the other person was standing right in front of them.
People start a new thread when there are too many postings about a different subject or when the flaming is going around in circles and people are sick of it. Another reason for starting another thread, is if there is another subject that interests the people that are following a certain stock. An example of this is general information, cheerleading vs technical review of a company or stock. If there aren't a lot of people posting or participating in a thread then most of the new ideas, thoughts, and opinions will be in the follow-up form of a message.
At least in stock threads, stock price activity whether up or down, will generate postings on a thread. Most investors are the optimistic type and there will be a great deal more postings if the stock is on its way up. I beleive what determines whether a thread is long or short is the quality of information the participants are posting. But ultimately, the price and future of the stock determines length and duration.
Sometimes there will be people that are new to a long thread and they will ask the same basic questions that were answered many times before in the previous messages. Some people get irritated at the laziness of others and either courteously ask the people to read the prior posts or flame them for their laziness.
When there is an agreement between participants of a certain thread. They thank the other people for their contributions and make statements such as "after this stock hits a certain price they will meet on a beach in Hawaii or the Carribean and have a party". When there is a disagreement, some civilized people post questions or ask the other person to reclarify a statement. Others will just flame the original poster. There are people out there that take messages personally. They believe the other person is making a personal attack on them. This is not to say that some people aren't making personal attacks but most people take it too personally. An example of this is when a person states some facts or information and another person is just asking for the source of the facts or information to investigate for himself or herself. The other person will react to it as if the other person was questioning their intelligence or ethics. If a person breaks the netiquette of a stock thread or stock board, other people will kindly remind the other person. If the conduct or actions continue, there will be somebody out there who is willing to get into a flaming match with this violator.
When I first started to follow these stock threads, I wouldn't dare post a message. I had the feeling that what I had to say wasn't important or intelligent enough. If I had a question, I would keep reading all the posts to see if my question was answered. I didn't want all these people to think my question was silly or stupid. It took two weeks before I became comfortable enough to start posting. I really wanted to take full advantage of these stock threads to boost my investing knowledge. I went through a lot of anxiety before my first posting. I was following a thread and I wanted to know the phone number of the company's investor relations department. I wanted to find out directly from the company what their future plans were and to get an idea of where the company was heading. The price of the stock was going up and I really wanted to buy some shares but I wanted to confirm some facts with the company, so I took the plunge and posted my first message. I was surprised that people were really helpful. I slowly became comfortable after a few postings.
If I am just browsing through the different threads, I will look for a stock whose price is moving up or volume of trading is high. Another factor is number of postings for that thread. If there are a high number postings it would appear to me there must be some reason for the interest in this stock. I am happy if a thread I follow adds to my knowledge base about a certain stock and I am even happier if the thread helps me make money. I currently use Netscape as my browser but I have used Internet Explorer also. I really don't see any major differences between the two. One thing I did change is the type of mouse that I use to read newsgroups. Instead of using the mouse that needs to be moved around, I use a stationary mouse that is controlled by a button, similar to the type on a laptop computer. I find it is easier and quicker to read messages because with the stationary mouse, when I need to scroll up or down to read the message, I don't have to keep moving the mouse so that the cursor or pointer is always on the up or down scroll buttons. The cursor or pointer always remains where I want it.
My current posting style is to post when I have questions but I won't post answers to other people's questions unless I am confident that my information or answer is correct. I decide to post a question when I have read the prior posts and cannot find an answer to my question. The conflict I have is whether the question I have is useful, valid and appropriate for the thread, even after over 50 postings I still have this feeling. I don't want to be like one of others that post just to post something. After I post a message, I am excited that I might be able to find the information I was looking for. I am also curious to see I will even get a response to my question. In Silicon Investor, there is a section that will tell you if you have a reply to your message or I look at the following posts. The first sentence is shown with the number of the post so this speeds up your search. I have received follow ups to my questions and I always send them a message of thanks for their time and information whether helpful or not. The long term effects of a particular newsgroup or thread is that their is some kind of bond between certain individuals that help each other in their common goal, which is to make money. Freindships have formed from these cybermeetings.
I have searched the internet using Webcrawler and Yahoo search engines. I had typed in the word flaming and I found a site that gave the definition of flaming, which (surprisingly enough) was called "Flaming on the 'Net." Here I found a ten step guideline to composing a good flame. There are even sample flame messages that were bad and are listed in his Hall of Shame. He will soon have a Hall of Fame link to great flames. The author of this web site seems to have a great interest in aggressive behavior and seems to take a sadistic pleasure in humiliating people's attempt at flaming. This author seems to match my perception of those type of people that are always flaming somebody on the message boards or newsgroups. Sometimes these people that do the flaming can be very cruel and vicious. They don't take into account the feelings of the person they are flaming.