Thursday, July 22, 2010

Digging into Lists


Ok so after giving thought to what I would like my lists to do on Empire Avenue, I am finally ready to actually start moving the old follows around. As one of the people whining to being able to favourite people, I feel that my lists needto be a tool that I can actually use to categorize all the information I find on Empire Avenue.
If you read my blog, you have probably figured out that other than when I get aggressive with my portfolio, pretty much everything I do on empire avenue is about people and not so much about influence. I enjoy connecting with new people and chatting; finding out what they are talking about. However, when the Avenue gets an influx of new people, I tend to get a little lost. It is information overload and I can't properly process it.
I want to be able to use lists to minimize this.  The biggest reason I followed so many people on the old system was because I was aggressively flipping stocks and building up my eaves. I hated the idea of keeping one stock in people, it messes up my portfolio and makes it unmanageable. It was bad enough trying to track the investments I was making as it was. I wanted people to be allowed to chat on my wall. If I didn't have shares in them, the only way to do that was follow them. Then the Chile explosion came. I was buying stocks all over the place, and the easiest way to tag who I had bought, was to follow them. Then when I would go into communities to find people I could see whether I had bought them or not because the follow would show. This further diluted what I wanted follows to do. My headlines became useless.
With the last update, I cleaned up my portfolio, now that people were giving proper dividends and I could stop flipping people just to make eaves. This made it easier to just follow my portfolio in headlines because I only had a handful of 'flip' stocks left. I could actually follow the content I wanted to.
Then everyone started running out of stocks. Then I began selling off the people capped out, so they could make some money to buy upgrades, and messed up that strategy.
Well now we get the list update and don't have follows anymore and this opens the doors wide, although once you start digging into it, it is a little overwhelming, especially if you have been here for a while and followed a lot of people. They moved all those follows to the watch list, which makes that list unusable for a lot of us until we clean it up. (yes my follow list was unusable too). Trust me I know that too well. However, we now have 5 lists to put people on. 5!!! eeeekkk
Now I have so many options my head is spinning. What exactly do I want my lists to do?
1. I want to be able to easily find when someone whose blog I like posts.
2. I want to be able to follow friends in my headlines, people I like and talk to and see what they are saying and who they are buying.
3. I want to be able to tag stocks that I buy to flip so I can easily find them and watch for when I need to sell, or invest more in them.
4. I want to be able to tag the people I have talked to who sometimes blend in because the sheer volume of people I have talked to is just overwhelming.
After wrapping my head a round this for a day and a bit, I have come up with the following plan, at least for now.
Favourite Content: I want this list to ONLY have people in it whose content I want to check on a regular basis. Basically blog posts. This is the one that will take the most work. This information had been so muddled for so long, I can't remember most of the people I wanted on this list when I endorsed their blogs.
Friends and Family: Ok this seems like a useless list to me, since it would only have e(PGNOME) on it. So it has become a mix of 2 and 4. It is the people I talk to on twitter, the people I have talked to on empire ave, or just generally want to follow.
Private: This is where I can tag the stocks I want to watch to know when to sell. This seems like something I should keep private.
Recommended Buys: This is the one I have the biggest issue with. When to buy people changes all the time. This seems like this will be the most abused list out there. I already have this feeling I should be reciprocating recommends, but really isn't that against the point? If I am going to back a stock, I want to be sure that they are worth buying. Whether they give good dividends or whether I think they will rise. Do I recommend buying them because they are good people (which is really why I recommend stocks for the most part anyway)? You can't tell this from people's lists. They are going to use them for whatever reason they want. It isn't a list I am going to trust.
Watch list: uh yeah This list won't be doing anything for a while haha. 
I would really like to be able to see favourite content the way we see recommended buys. I would rather be a fave content than a recommended buy. To be honest, I would also be more likely to buy from a recommended content list than a recommended buy anyway. The way the 'game' has been going by a small but loud group lately anyway I really don't trust the lists. Maybe when the rest of the members get a little louder and go for content over power I will be able to. Until then, as usual, I will be off doing my own thing.
My recommended buy list is going to be short, and it will change a lot. I will play that list as someone I think would rise, or give good dividends. Although that sucks because I pick those stocks very rarely.
My buying strategy has really changed a lot now that my portfolio value is huge. I really tend to buy to give that person eaves. I may not keep the stock all that long, a few days, or whatever because well by the time they catch on that they should come see me, they have plateaued, and I really don't want to tie my money up that long. I can, however give you a big buy when I can afford it if I like you and give you some eaves to play with. The disclaimer here is that I am not looking for beggars here, I am talking about people out there trying to connect, trying to have conversations, trying to USE the social network hub we have going. Not someone begging, spamming, posting garbage all over for fake value. I am over it, I am not feeding it. Should these people i am passing eaves to be a recommended stock? See to me I think they should be. Their stock might now be growing, but yeah I think you should buy them too.. see it is all grrr... lol
Ok maybe it isn't all clear in my head. What do you think recommended buys should be for? Would you be checking out my list? How much faith do you have in my picks?

5 comments:

  1. I have RSI from endlessly clicking to clean up the Watch List.

    One thing you might try for content you enjoy is a feed reader. Any EA person I find with a blog I want to read goes into my Google Reader. I use the Content list only to highlight the feeds I'm actively interested in, in case anyone wants to see. For me that keeps it simple.

    I do like your idea for the Private list, and I'm going to shamelessly steal that idea and copy you.

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  2. ya know i add stuff to the reader thing, and i never check it..lol
    I am on ea all the time anyway, I would rather just check that haha

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  3. Excellent post Fray!

    A couple observations....

    1) I think the recommended buy list should be way shorter than 200.
    2) I also agree that importing the follower/following list was a mistake. They should at least give us the chance to wipe it out and start over or make it easy to delete. With over 2000 people in there, it is unmanageable

    Great post again!

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  4. I was thinking that too, but then with no easy search function, how do i go find those people i DO want to list again? I think that would be harder.

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  5. I don't know really.. but at least in my recommended buy list I have the people who I think are worth the more in terms of dividends, not just share value.

    Favourite content.. I'm still a bit undecided of its final use, I've added a couple of ppl there, but it may not be final.

    Friends and family, I'm using it for that purpose really, I've got a few friends from work and other places playing and also I may use it to put people I get along well on the site.

    Private list is for quick stock buy/sell. And for other things under my sleeve lol.

    Watch list is getting slowly cleaned up until I can make it a true watch list.

    Give people a week to come up with some conspiracy theories about how to use the lists

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