http://www.distillingfinance.com and http://www.bullpoo.com

Users now are rated based on accuracy of their picks and their social picks score. The social picks score in turn depends on lot of factors including other user’s vote on the analysis.
So to circumvent the bad analysis problem, I would read the analysis of only those users who have a high accuracy and a higher than average social picks score.

On revealing your own picks, I guess smart people always like to show off. If you have a portfolio which is appreciating higher than other people’s, you would want it to become a topic for discussion. I do not think that you will make less money on your picks if 100 other ppl know about them

I would agree with you that the quality of analysis on the site is lacking. Also, probably because of the nature of its user base, the focus is largely on tech stocks. How much this will improve when they lift their invitation-only restriction is unknown. If they can gain a lot of traction and build a user base, there may be enough high quality write ups to balance out the bad ones.

I believe SocialPicks should try harder to conform to financial analysis standards, whereas now they seem to conform more to web2.0/social networking standards. They have a tough balancing act ahead of them. I mean the social networking stuff is the *new* thing they are bringing to this space. At the same time, making the views and user interface familiar to the finance community will make it easier for them to pick it up. A more familiar and “professional” layout will also encourage people to submit more “professional” material.

You hit on another key factor to SocialPick’s success. You ask “What would I gain by revealing my stock picks?” and then sort of answer that question when you point out that bloggers can gain traffic by posting their reviews there. SocialPicks needs to work very closely with the finance blogging community and make it as easy as possible for bloggers transpose content from their blogs into SocialPicks and visa-verse. There is a community of people out there who just loves to create content (some good, some bad); working with them will be key.

So in my mind, there are two goals the site should strive for. (1) Become a source of research like any other professional analysis firm (although with amateur, user-submitted content) by making the site design and layout more accessible to non- techies. (2) Become the standard way for finance bloggers to share their stock picks and analysis by working closely with the blogging community.

p.s. I don’t nee an invite

Here is a review of the latest Web 2.0 stock research site, SocialPicks…