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Interesting. Two issues these discussions bring up - Identity and Facebook. 

When I met with Daniel Marovitz, late of Deutsche Bank now of startup Buzzumi, he talked about the lessons his startup gained in regards to Facebook. 

When Buzzini started, you needed to log in through Facebook, meaning you needed a Facebook account. Daniel looked at the sheer number of people connected via Facebook and felt it was a no brainer. However, the connections, really didn't get off the ground. He investigated and found, through market research that many people, and in his words 'the more senior and serious the person, people who's opinions I respected' were, they less they were to even be a member of Facebook. 

Facebook is where people share picture of their children with people they like. Is it a place for business, real business, not just games credits or vouchers? Many thought it would be, but antedotal evidence is suggessting, it isn't (right now).

The second is identity. I attended the CSFI Visa Fellowship roundtable looking at indentity in financial services yesterday. In a heated debate on KYC, idenity and so on, one of the roundtable members commented that on the first day of Metro Bank's launch in the UK 90% of the people who opened one of their 'instant accounts' did so with fraudulent documentation. 90%! The bank average is 18%.

Unique personal digital identity (which is what it will evolve into) will be the topic of 2012 - I predict. 

'I've had it with these Mother-F*&%ing snakes in this Mother-F*&%ing ATM!' (sorry, couldn'y resist) 

The risk system were working, but no one on the trading floor was paying attention. This has been the not-very-secret common knowledge of enterprise-wide investment banking risk management, for years! 

Please don't let anyone say they are surprised. 

Yes, setting up a real, full-service bank - with mortgage processing, customer service, online access etc... - is actually hard and takes time, effort, money and staff. Shocker. 

First Risk, now Markets and Professional?!...maybe that's what all those TR peeps were Tweeting about not very long ago...

Dirk, is that your cat? Or have you gone all 'Planet of the Felines' on us? :-)

thanks Dirk!

Good tip Mike, thanks!

Really? Because I have #LondonRiots trending on my UK trending chart and over the weekend it was #woodgreen.

"Stock picking engines rely on their ability to sift throught the general noise and zero in on the hard signals that matter." That is exactly it. That is how these 'stock picking' engines work. 

The argument "But what if Twitter has become the preserve of the chattering classes, clogged with an endless stream of self-congratulatory tweets from total strangers pretending to be best mates?" doesn't make sense when talking about a 'stock picking' service. It's kind of like saying: 'that new fruit & veg stall down the road will never work, because that poncy pub on the corner is full of wankers.' The reasoning doesn't link up. 

I guess two academic studies should be disregarded? The real proof is if any of these firms/services make money. I just hope if that happens no one celebrates with a 'self-congratulatory tweet'.



I'll have her people call your people, George!

Thank you! 25,000 new accounts. See? Wasn't that easy? Q: "How many customers do you have?" A: 25,000.

So much more straighforward than "...that number is meaningless"