David Jackson

http://seekingalpha.com/by/author/david-jackson/

405 Comments

    • The Latest Changes to SeekingAlpha.com [view article]
      Jud -- the news in the Breaking News section is all produced by our own editors to carefully defined standards. It's different in nature from the other articles on the site, which is why we color coded it differently. Sep 01 05:37 PM
    • The Latest Changes to SeekingAlpha.com [view article]
      Steve Sinclair, thank you for pointing out that "The Big Picture" is also a column on Investors' Business Daily. That suggests that (a) the term is generic, and (b) readers will understand what it refers to.

      Out of the alternative names that have been suggested in the comments here, is there one that stands out to anyone?       Sep 01 03:00 PM
    • The Latest Changes to SeekingAlpha.com [view article]
      Rumpole, your point about disability access is crucial -- thank you for raising it. One of the benefits of moving to dashboards is that we could display the navigation to the detailed areas of the site (in the left column) in a larger font. In fact, much of the navigation on the site is now in a larger font size. I realize that doesn't help you if you're blind, but hopefully it does help some people.

      We'd be really interested to hear from you: how do you access the site? Do you use text-to-audio software, and if so, how well does it run on Seeking Alpha?       Sep 01 02:57 PM
    • The Latest Changes to SeekingAlpha.com [view article]
      DaveW, thanks for your thoughtful feedback (as always). The principle we used behind what goes into The Big Picture and what goes into Stocks & Sectors is that any article about individual stocks and sectors belongs in the latter, while trends belong in the former.

      For that reason, we put Housing & Real Estate in The Big Picture, but Homebuilders in Stocks & Sectors.

      I think you're right about the importance of financials: they're a key driver of this market.       Sep 01 02:54 PM
    • The Latest Changes to SeekingAlpha.com [view article]
      User 666 -- I hope it's not that bad! The contents of the old drop downs are exactly as they were before, but in the left-hand margin of the dashboards. We made one category move -- we moved Oil, Commodities and Currencies from Global Markets (now Global Investing) to The Big Picture (formerly US Market). Otherwise everything is as it was before. Sep 01 02:51 PM
    • The Latest Changes to SeekingAlpha.com [view article]
      Thank you everyone for your comments so far. We're listening carefully! Sep 01 05:12 AM
    • Hedge Fund Manager's Notebook: Why Hummers Are Greener Than Hybrids, and Tech & Homebuilders May Be a Buy [view article]
      Thank you Dame Daxx! We've fixed it. Aug 28 02:56 PM
    • Hedge Fund Manager's Notebook: The Power of Dividends [view article]
      oldtdr and stone fox capital, we (Seeking Alpha) chose the title, not the author. He sends notes every day, and we try to highlight the key topic or topics he mentions. But by their nature, the notes are brief.

      Do you have any suggestions for alternative titles?       Aug 28 02:39 AM
    • What's Changed on the Seeking Alpha Website? [view article]
      We have the full article list available, but haven't uploaded the change to the home page yet (that will take about another week as it's part of other changes). But meanwhile, here's the view you're looking for:

      seekingalpha.com/artic...       Aug 20 12:30 PM
    • Currency ETFs and ETNs [view article]
      Thank you! We've updated the list to include:
      Market Vectors Double Long Euro ETN (URR)
      Market Vectors Double Short Euro ETN (DRR)       Aug 20 01:57 AM
    • What's Changed on the Seeking Alpha Website? [view article]
      Hi DaveW,

      It was a real surprise to find out how many people there are who, as you put it, 'have no problem sifting through the 100+ articles that you put online in the early a.m. hours'.

      One tech guy in Aruba? I wish we could manage with that (it would be a lot cheaper!). We have a fantastically talented team of 16 tech people, including design, CSS and programmers. Over the next year, you should see some interesting new things as a result...

      BTW, on a personal note, I particularly appreciated the care and thoughtfulness you put into your comments here. Thank you.       Aug 18 03:40 PM
    • What's Changed on the Seeking Alpha Website? [view article]
      Sorry about the hiatus -- we're actually working hard to implement the feedback we received from you. It's not as trivial as it seems, because we're in the middle of a series of improvements to the site, and we do extensive testing on any code changes to ensure that they are robust enough for the traffic we get (about 3.5 MM uniques a month currently). Having said that, I realize that you're waiting for us to restore the "most recent articles" view, and we'll do that as quickly as we can. In the meantime, I really appreciate your patience, as I know you're waiting for this.

      I'd resolved in my earlier replies to your comments to listen to your feedback and not use this as an opportunity to tell you the rationale behind some of the current and upcoming changes. But it now strikes me that those who commented here might welcome more explanation. Here goes.

      The core navigation challenge we're facing is that the number of articles we publish each day continues to rise sharply over time. Despite the fact that we reject a large number of articles, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of articles submitted to us, including by hedge fund managers and others who aren't publishing elsewhere. Excluding conference call transcripts, we're now publishing 150-200 articles each weekday, and we expect the number to continue to rise.

      How do you make that volume of articles navigable? We publish many articles before the market opens, so while there's a constant flow of new articles during the day, there's a substantial mass of new articles first thing in the morning. That poses two challenges: (1) Many (most?) users don't want to browse through pages of unsorted headlines, and as a result many people told us that the old home page was 'overwhelming' or 'unmanageable'. (2) Contributing authors don't get exposure on our home page because their headline rolls off the home page before the market opens, or even if it's published later in the day, it's quickly superceded by newer headlines. As a result of these two challenges, we realized that a simple reverse chronological list of articles will become more and more unsatisfactory for many of our readers as the number of articles we publish continues to grow.

      To help people find what's useful for them, we have to offer a great browsing experience and also more personalization. Personalization is the easy part: watchlists. The big decision there was to allow readers to track authors as well as stocks, and to make it really easy to add stocks and authors to your watchlist as you browse the site.

      Getting "browsing" right is harder. The stats tell us that the current navigation in the top bar dropdowns isn't working. So we've designed a set of dashboards that allow you to see a large number of headlines grouped by themes. Very soon, you'll see us replace the top bar drop-down navigation with clickable links to these dashboards, from which it's really easy to find the individual themes, sectors or topics in more depth. The Sector Dashboard is the first of these dashboards. But don't despair if you don't browse by sector -- there are others that offer different views that we'll show you soon.

      An important result of these dashbaords is that headlines stay in view for much longer, instead of rolling off the home page as soon as new articles come along.

      Your feedback has been enormously helpful in a few ways. First, you've said loud and clear that even if we dramatically improve the overall navigation with a series of dashboards, you *still* want a reverse chronological view. So we're providing a clear link to that from the home page. Second, we'd assumed that to make the dashboards as scan-able as possible, we should omit author names; but you've told us again that author names really matter. So we're restoring them. And third, you've told us that the home page doesn't feel alive enough without the constant bubbling of new headlines in real time.

      Thank you again for your help, input and patience.
      David       Aug 18 02:23 PM
    • What's Changed on the Seeking Alpha Website? [view article]
      Guys,

      There are some wierd theories floating round here: our goal is simply to build the best possible service for our readers. We're not trying to "get you" to do anything (and certainly not to register or give us information for our own purposes). We want to give the different groups what's best for them.

      According to what you've written, you don't have a group of stocks or portfolio that you track, you're not interested in following particular authors, you're not interested in news about the market, and you don't want any sort of filtering or sorting of articles. That makes you an important group of readers for us, but a minority.

      We got extensive feedback on the old home page, and found that as the volume of articles we publish rises, a large group of readers were alienated by the feeling that the old home page was "overwhelming.&qu... They wanted more help identifying the most topical or best articles. That, for example, is why we've given greater prominence to "Most Popular" on the new home page.

      Similarly, an extremely large group wants to be able to track our articles on stocks or authors they follow in a watchlist or with email alerts. To provide that most effectively, we need to be able to store their choices, and that means requiring registration.

      The good news is that we can cater to every group. We'll provide a home page for you guys that shows you a stream of articles with author names in reverse chronological order. That stream can be entirely unfiltered and can show author names as it did before.

      Because this was the functionality that we removed, it's not surprising that this is the focus of all the comments here. And that's exactly why we invited feedback: our testing and analysis of our site stats can show what's best for the majority of our users, but can miss the needs of an important groups.

      That's why your feedback is helpful and important, and allows us to provide what you'd like.       Aug 14 02:48 AM
    • What's Changed on the Seeking Alpha Website? [view article]
      Thanks for all your suggestions, everyone. One quick point: all your comments (without exception) have focused on the single issue of the change to the number of articles displayed on the home page. It would be helpful for us to get some feedback from you on the other changes:

      1. Have you tried setting up a watchlist? Have you noticed you can add authors to the watchlist from any article page (see the "Add to watchlist" button below my photo on this page), and stocks from any quote page? How is the experience generally?

      2. Many of our readers are heavy users of transcripts; I don't know if that applies to any of the readers who have commented here. But even if not, have you tried the new transcripts center, and in particular the search?

      3. What do you think of the new "Quick Links" section below the search box (see top right of this page)?

      4. Any recommendations for changes to the Market Currents home page, which you can reach via the "Breaking News" quick link?

      Thanks again for your feedback and suggestions.       Aug 13 04:04 PM
    • What's Changed on the Seeking Alpha Website? [view article]
      The key recommendations from all your comments seem to be:

      1. Provide a view whereby you can see a stream of all the latest articles, unsorted by sector and showing author names, and pagination so you can go back in time. Make sure that page is easily accessible from the home page.

      2. Add authors to the sector dashboard.

      Is this correct?
       Aug 13 12:07 PM
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