Comments for Investor Relations Blog

Comment on The SEC inquiry that made me shudder by Agoracom

Agoracom — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:52:07 +0000

Dominic, one of my biggest debates with Web 2.0 techies/bloggers is their failure to understand the slow adoption of such tools by the masses.

You hit the nail dead on with your comment about most not being comfortable with RSS feeds. I’ll go farther and say most don’t even fully understand them.

As such, we all have to slow down and slowly introduce new Web 2.0 tools. More importantly, we can only introduce those that are reliable and have a future. Otherwise, we risk people giving up on them.

The good news is that when I do show things like RSS feeds and RSS readers to CEO’s or investors, they jump all over it.

However, rather than calling them RSS feeds and readers, I call them “my personal newspaper”. It’s easier for them to understand both the concept and its value.

To this end, after seeing the reactions of most small-cap CEO’s, I posted the following small-cap CEO lesson.

http://blog.agoracom.com/2008/04/08/small-cap-ceo-lesson-your-personal-business-newspaper-on-google/

It didn’t change the small-cap world overnight but believe me when I tell you that I’ve run into non-clients on the street that have said to me “I want one of those”.

Slow and steady education by people like you, ourselves, Zu and others will pay greater dividends than simply throwing features at people with funny sounding names.

Regards,
George

Comment on Q&A: zu.com communications inc. by Agoracom

Agoracom — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:35:11 +0000

Congrats to the entire Zu team. Love to see this kind of innovation from up and coming Web 2.0 Canadian firms.

Regards,
George

Comment on Icahn joins blogosphere, gets blank stares by Agoracom

Agoracom — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:32:57 +0000

“investor relations officers and corporate secretaries cannot take developments such as Carl Icahn blogging lightly.”

Agreed. Just look at what Eric Jackson was able to do as a small Motorola and Yahoo shareholder.

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2007/07/09/a-new-thorn-in-motorolas-side/?mod=homeblogmod_dealjournal

Regards,
George

Comment on SEC to rule soon on websites for Reg. FD by Agoracom

Agoracom — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:24:57 +0000

Dominic, you’ll be interested to know that we recently launched IR RSS feeds for all of our clients. The feeds include any kind of IR communication, not just press releases.

http://blog.agoracom.com/2008/06/13/news-agoracom-launches-ir-rss-feeds-for-clients/

In addition, we are working with a mobile provider to “mobilize” the RSS feeds so that shareholders are notified of any IR communication without sitting at their PC’s.

Naturally, our clients haven’t stopped issuing press releases but we’re ready for the day. I firmly believe it will happen but I do worry about the one conflict you have pointed out in the past - exchanges owning news wires.

Regards,
George

Comment on A mock "notice-and-access" earnings release by Agoracom

Agoracom — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:12:32 +0000

Dominic, I know this comment comes months after the original post but - in response to Robin - our surveys of small-cap investors shows that 99% of them use the web to conduct research.

These surveys were conducted off-line at conferences. Otherwise, online surveys of online habits would be skewed.

As such, it is a non-issue on the small-cap side.

If you need links to the surveys, let me know.

Regards,
George

Comment on SEC to rule soon on websites for Reg. FD by Dominic Jones

Dominic Jones — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:13:40 +0000

No, there’s no requirement as such for companies to have a website, much less a specific section of it. That’s why you’ll see rules and proposed rules that say companies must post information on their sites, if they have one. However, as a practical matter and to mitigate risks in several areas, it has become almost essential to have a website.

In many ways, the rules are extremely outdated. But I think the NYSE’s rules are the worst.

Comment on SEC to rule soon on websites for Reg. FD by Annabel

Annabel — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:22:05 +0000

As a matter of interest - and I had a trawl through the Nasdaq site today but couldn’t find the answer - is it a listing requirement for North American exchanges that listed stocks have an investor section on their website? I know it’s hard to believe there are listed companies out there who wouldn’t have a corporate/ investor website but is it a formal requirement in your part of the world? It’s not in mine …

Comment on SEC to rule soon on websites for Reg. FD by Dominic Jones

Dominic Jones — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:49:41 +0000

So true, Derek, so true.

Comment on SEC to rule soon on websites for Reg. FD by Derek

Derek — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:47:42 +0000

I imagine if the docs fail to go up on the website in time there will be much finger-pointing between the IROs, design agencies, site owners, hosting provider etc.
This does happen when a lot of smaller companies (say AIM in the UK) have websites created by development houses where listing and disclosure results are less top-of-mind.

Comment on Dispelling the “cookie myth” around e-proxy by SEC to rule soon on websites for Reg. FD | IR Web Report

SEC to rule soon on websites for Reg. FD | IR Web Report — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:35:53 +0000

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