Welcome to the New Seeking Alpha

Welcome to the new Seeking Alpha.

We began Seeking Alpha three years ago with a mission to aggregate high quality market analysis from money managers and financial bloggers in an easily accessible manner, free for all individual and institutional investors. We’ve evolved to provide more comprehensive daily market news, while using the internet’s unique resources and tools to broaden the investor's information horizon in a manner no other financial site can match.

Our new design makes all of this a lot easier to do. The new site contains a whole host of enhancements incorporated throughout – from our homepage through article pages, sector pages and individual stock pages. Among the features of Seeking Alpha 2.0:

• Brighter spotlight on authors on article pages

• Enhanced search function, with auto-fill

• Clearer separation of community-submitted opinion articles from SA news briefs

• A sidebar widget indicating readers’ most popular articles and our editors' picks

• Clearer charts, data and comments on individual stocks

• Quick and easy registration for personalized email alerts and commenting

• Streamlined navigation

We hope you’ll take a few minutes to explore our new site and share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

We’re currently developing a number of additional projects upon this new platform - most of them initiated by contributor and reader suggestions - so please continue sending in your ideas.

We see this new site as a turning point, as we've always believed that micropublishing, the smart hyperlink, and clear presentation will transform financial media.

Thanks as always for reading and contributing to Seeking Alpha.

* UPDATE 9/12: We're Listening: SA Homepage Now Includes Author Links

~ Mick Weinstein, Seeking Alpha Editor in Chief

Comments

[gembree]

I already miss seeing bylines from the main navigation, but it doesn't look bad overall so far.

[Gal E. Bafin]

The site loads so quickly now.
and the look is so slick...

thank :)

[James Camron]

it looks amazing and loads really fast, congratulations seeking alpha!

[roeper]

wasn't broken, didn't need fixing. thumbs down.

[James Camron]

Disagree, this change is more than welcome, the site is much clearer than it ever was.

[Frank Li]

The new search is phenomenal! Love the way it completes company names and stock tickers.

[Ichsa]

This is like Seeking Alpha on steroids. Page load times are exceptional. Seriously, how do you make those pages load so quickly?

[RP]

Ugh! Definitely a case where the old SA was better than the new SA!

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

RP, any particular features you miss that you think we should look at again in the new design? -- David

[Ceviche Fund Partners LP/Dan Jacome]

like most of the changes, but one thing i I think is REALLY unfair is at the beginning of each article, you no longer write "author xyz submits"

this gives the impression that A) authors are no longer important and that B) seeking alpha is coming up with all this content on its own.

please fix that..I wish this site the best but I think the authors first name needs to continue being highlighted at the beginning of EVERY article

thx
dan

[Mick Weinstein]

Thanks Daniel.

Regarding the author byline - a central goal of the rebuild is to bring more attention to authors. Articles, like mine here, will contain a full sidebar element with not only a link to the author's site, but also a new link to the author's bio and articles that have been published on SA.

On RSS feeds and third party feeds, the intro byline will remain the same as it was on the old site, ie. 'Daniel Jacome submits:' with a link to your site.

Also, we plan to use the central box on the homepage to highlight an 'author of the week' that will rotate among our top contributors.

~ Mick

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Hi Daniel, this is a really key issue for us, as one of our top goals was to *increase* the exposure we're giving to contributors. I'd love to hear from other readers: do the photo and links on the left hand side of each article page increase the prominence of the authors, compared to what we had before?

[Ralph F]

Page load time is amazing. Search is far, far better (no longer need to use Yahoo Finance to look up ticker symbols). Navigation between sectors is easier, and you seem to be showing more topics now. I also like the look -- it's clean and readable.

[Sri]

The new layout looks good. Will provide feedback as we use it more!

Nidhi

[Sri]

the new layout looks good. Will comment more as we use it more ..

Nidhi

[Sri]

My old name/pseudonym is lost though .. I had to create a new one.

[EE]

can you cover pink sheet and over the counter stocks?

[garyw]

some of the changes are ok, but overall I dislike the changes and long for the old look. the first glance is not nearly as informative or comprehansive as before

[Donalddon5]

I enjoy your articles very much.

[User 16724]

perhaps you have a few glitches in your newsystem. have not received any e-mails all day

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

We delayed sending out the emails this morning until the new site was live. Sorry for the delay -- you should have it now.

[User 16724]

as of 1:38 Tues have received only 2 e-mails

[Jerry]

Is there any way to get a page-view of headlines from all the sections, like it used to be? Very annoying to have to click into the different sections for things. Also, any way to have a date delimiter when in the article pagination view?

Looks much "prettier", but seemingly less functional ...

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Hi Jerry,

You can view headlines from all articles by clicking on the "More" link below the headlines in the "Opinion & Analysis" column on the home page. That link takes you here:
seekingalpha.com/articles/list /

(The title for that page should be "Latest Articles", not "Article Pagination" -- a bug we just discovered.)

The headlines on that page are in reverse chronological order, so generally you don't need a date delimiter as most of the headlines you see will be today's.

Some explanation about the new home page design: Our goal was to show as many headlines on the home page as possible, while telling a coherent "story" instead of providing an undifferentiated river of headlines. The new home page looks as though it has fewer headlines, because the headlines are divided into News, Opinion & Analysis and Long Ideas/Short Ideas/Cramer/Transcripts etc. But in fact in shows more headlines than the old home page, and groups them into coherent units that should hopefully be more useful. Showing dates, tickers and authors below headlines significantly restricted the number of headlines we could show on a page, so we opted to eliminate that info on the home page and the sector home pages.

We hope that the effect is that the Seeking Alpha home page is a much more powerful resource. It shows the top news stories in the left hand column, a wide selection of opinion and analysis in the center column, and transcripts in the right hand column. We hope this denser layout will be particularly powerful on the sector home pages -- if you work in the energy industry, for example, the Energy sector home page is now a far richer resource.

We tried to take care of the people who wanted the undifferentiated "river of headlines" by providing that "More" link. Also, the "All headlines" email we send out every morning lists all the articles by sector.

Best,
David

[gembree]

I appreciate the reasoning for the change, but it just has the feel of two undifferentiated rivers to me. The information available to me immediately in the old style when deciding to click an article was headline, sector, tickers, author, date/time, even a brief snippet; now I am supposed to decide what to read based on the headline alone and whether it is "news" or "commentary" (I care about both).

I can use my scroll wheel if you have more headlines than fit on one page, but the new layout just kills my ability to pick out meaningful articles. Unfortunately the quality of commentary is not uniform, and I don't want to read through a lot of trash or use the search function just to find something worth reading!

[gembree]

To give an example, of the top five commentaries in US Market, three are about the Fed. Am I supposed to use the headline to choose? In the old style I would have immediately gone to the author with the most credibility, or the article dealing specifically with impact on the Russell, etc. and gotten to the others if I had time. It's nice that you are improving the author recognition in the sidebar, but you just removed all front page visibility for authors!

I do think the rebuild looks slick - there is way too much white space, in my opinion, but I can zoom out to help with that. I will stick with it and see how it wears.

[RP]

Well said, gembree. A lot of functionality has been sacrificed to make the site 'slick'.

The ability to filter articles by authors has definitely been lost and this was a biggie - you now have to wade through all the chaff to find the wheat, articles that were well written, well thought out.

[Ceviche Fund Partners LP/Dan Jacome]

Ummm, maybe it is my PC, but when I look at all my articles, I do not see my PIC or bio onthe left hand side, as you claim.

That is why I complained earlier....can someone confirm this?

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Hi Daniel,

We're trying to transition all the pictures and bios to the new platform. Look at this article for an example of one with a picture etc:

seekingalpha.com/article/45722

[User 41406]

Did these changes impact the email articles? I have not received any since point on the 26th?

Walter Willis
[e-mail]

[User 82072]

oustanding information lots of insights and profesional perspective

[writersblock]

Could we have the author names back on the front page, please? Also, for some reason, all my email alerts disappeared - haven't gotten any since Friday.

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Hi writersblock,

Thanks for this feedback -- v helpful. We're gathering input about author names on the front page, so this is helpful.

On email, we've had issues sending out emails the past couple of days (we send over 450,000 every day). Hopefully they are resolved -- by the time you read this you should have received your email alerts as usual.

David

[writersblock]

It would also be nice to see dates on the articles on the front page, so we can see where one day ends, and the next days' articles begin.

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

FYI -- All articles on the front page are today's.

[Barney]

A lot of people seem to be impressed with how fast pages load and how slick the site looks. Personally, what was and hopefully will continue to be the most important part of this site is the wealth of info that you can get. I always look forward to what David Fry, Barry Ritholz, David Merkel, Eric Savitz, etc. have to say. Even Cramer. It's become an impossible chore to track down these people. If I search for David Fry articles, I'm presented with a whole slew of them with no dates. I can't determine which is from today. I haven't seem an email from SA since Saturday. People, let's not get so wrapped up with the "sizzle". I WANT MY "STEAK" BACK, PLEASE!

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Barney, the author pages are still up (and are a key part of the site), and list that author's articles with the latest first, with dates and stocks under each article. The author pages appear in search as "[Author Name] - Seeking Alpha". Usually the author page appears first in the search results. David Fry's is about the sixth in the list.

Here are the links to the authors you were looking for:
seekingalpha.com/author/david-fry
seekingalpha.com/author/barry-ritholtz
seekingalpha.com/author/david-merkel



You can find Cramer directly via the link below the top bar on the home page and here:
seekingalpha.com/tag/cramers-picks

Having said that, we're listening carefully to comments about author names on the home page. Please see my comment above about the factors that influenced our decision about finding the best home page design.

[pweicorpnyfbccom]

I don't see any improvements for the new sites and it's lot slower. Plus, I stopped getting emails subscription ever since the upgrade. Worse, the new subscription never works. (Button not responding).

[User 82402]

Since you have gone to the new website format all my email preferences are now messed up. I no longer get my ticker symbols or the subjects I requested. Several attempts at updating my information have been unsuccessful and the system does not save them. Please fix the bugs. SeekingAlpha is an excellent site.

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

User 82402 and others who have pointed out the glitches with email: don't worry! Your email preferences are unchanged, and we're resuming emails now. We had to freeze some of the emails as the new site rolled out, but you should be receiving emails again now.

[bzshadow]

i miss the sector listings at the top of the page so i can go right to telecom, biotech etc...

[SA Editor Eli Hoffmann]

Hi User 53292,

Very interested to read this. When you mouse over Sectors, do you not get a flyout menu of all the different sectors? If not, please respond with browser/platform info etc.

[Joe B]

Very (that is very very) sorry to see that you've killed off your emails. I had selected "real estate" and there were many articles which came from a stock and more honest orientation than what I expect from people selling a real estate product. Now? I get no more emails - can't send your articles on to the other members of my real estate group. Yes, very sorry to have this resource taken away.

[Joe B]

Your old (last week) emails point to a dead page, so until I had to log in to post my comment above, I didn't have access to my email settings. I thought you killed them all off. You could have just used the old pointer address, you know. Well, I see that the one sector which I had, Real Estate, is no longer there.?? You had LOTS of great articles and thought pieces. Are you saying that real estate is no longer of interest to your readers?? Huh? Maybe you've run out of thoughts? ;-)

Sadly, you leave me with WSJ's real estate email -- pale comparison to what you used to send. Loved Barry, especially Judy's summaries <sigh>, and a few others.

Well, thanks for giving us something to discuss when you used to send them out..

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Joe, please see my comment about email above. We haven't changed anything in the email system, and your should get your chosen email alerts today or tomorrow. -- David

[Joe B]

Hmmm... yes, well, uh, I had "Real Estate" checked. It no longer exists. Maybe you can show me where that is? When I go to what I have set, I have nothing set -- because the 1 thing which I was getting disappeared. You can say that is the same, but it isn't. Did you move Real Estate from sector to some other page?

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Joe, there was a glitch with the page that displays email options, but you're actually still subscribed to the same emails you were getting before. Soon we'll add the missing options to the email subscription page. -- David

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

On your question "Did you move Real Estate from sector to some other page?", real estate is in the drop-down menu for US Market as "Housing".

[David Lentz]

VERY nice! A story on how you went about this redesign would be highly interesting.

My only suggestion would be to relocate the author's byline from the bottom of the page to the top, just under the title. And the "more by this author" link could be carried along with it, to avoid adding extra lines of text on the screen.

I do kinda miss the photos of the authors, but I recognize that every image only slows page rendering, and will easily sacrifice the loss of the photos for faster page rendering.

I do wonder what will happen to graphics-laden pages, like David Fry's and Phil Davis. Perhaps some sort of compromise can be reached there to standardize on some low-bandwidth thumbnail images linking to pages (or something else, perhaps even (yuck) pop-ups).

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

David, thanks for your kind comment and suggestions. Perhaps the article page isn't loading correctly for you. On every article page, the author's photo, link to bio and link to the author's website is immediately below the headline in the left column, much more prominent than it used to be. Check out this page, for example, and let me know your thoughts: seekingalpha.com/article/45839 -- David

[buckoco]

Thanks for making Seeking Alpha available to all.
would be nice to have it earlier in AM

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Buckoco, thanks for your feedback. We're working on getting emails out faster. Currently, it takes over 2 hours to send out all the emails because we send over 450,000 per day and most of them are personalized. Full text emails take much longer and cost a ton to send, so we're wondering whether to convert full text emails to headlines only. Our approach until now has been "Always give users exactly what they want", but the issue we're facing is that full text emails slow down the delivery of headlines-only emails. Do you (or anyone else reading this) have any thoughts and advice for us on this issue? -- David

[Philip in Seattle]

The Ad column on the right dominates the page and makes it busy and distractive. The pumped Google ads as a result have excessive white space. More information, fewer ads please. More Google, less Yahoo.

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Thanks for your feedback, Philip. Totally agree with you about the excessive amount of white space. If you know advertisers who will fill the white space for us, let me know :-) Seriously, one consideration in the article page design was the optimal width of the column that contains the text. Lines which contain too many words are harder to scan, so we improved the design to hit the optimal breadth for the center column. We wanted the title to be prominent, and to be clearly associated with the author, so we had the article title span the left and center columns. Hopefully the right hand column won't be a distraction.

[Barney]

To David Jackson:
I'm trying to respond to your comment to me from 1:58PM today. EVERYTHING IS JUST SO SLOW! Paint seems to be drying quicker than the pages are loading. Did what you said about finding David Fry articles. Was still presented with a long list without any dates. Picked the first as you suggested and got nothing except an error message. Maybe the readers should give you a couple of weeks to iron all the kinks out. At this point trying to get any info from the site is becoming too frustating.

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Barney, not sure what's going on here. Pages load lightening fast for me, and this page --- seekingalpha.com/author/david-fry -- shows all David Fry's articles in reverse chronological order with dates below each headline.

[Barney]

David - So that's the only way to see David Fry's articles - putting that whole long link in. Is there any way to give me the good old days when I opened my email and had David's daily comments there for me to read at my leisure. Same for David Merkel or Barry Ritholz or all the rest of the gang?

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Barney - you should still be getting the emails just as you had them before, and the emails include the author name by the article title. The only change we made to the site was to remove author names from the home page so we could display more articles. Hope that helps. -- David

[Barney]

Sorry David - Only email that I got today was a short blurb about what's happening at Earthlink. That's been it pretty much since Saturday. I never used to go to the SA site. I got everything I needed from you through emails. I know this is a business and I value what I read from you very highly. That said, maybe the answer is to create a service for people like me and charge us for your emails and premium service. If you could, sign me right up.

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Barney, this is really helpful. We've got a particular challenge with full-text emails -- they're slowing down the sending of our headlines-only emails, and as a result we're delaying the sending of full text emails. It's also very expensive to send the emails. But we've resisted charging for anything. How would you feel if we switched the full text emails to a once-per-day email alert with headlines only?

[Barney]

Unfortunately David, time is money. Things blow up in the blink of an eye and conversely, opportunities are lost for lack of info. Once-per-day really doesn't work for me. At that point, there may not be a chair for me to sit down on when the music stops. Youv'e been very kind to give me a free ride with all this valuable info for quite a while. At this point, if I have to pay the piper (you) to continue, so be it. Stale news isn't worth anything. Good Night! By the way, the biggest plus of you site, whether I agree or disagree with whats written, it does make me think!

[Ceviche Fund Partners LP/Dan Jacome]

too many ads and authors names need to come back to the front page

[Vancouver]

Can you please add the RSS links again? They were concise & yet gave an overview of some of the financial events. When you switched formats, all the RSS feeds disappeared.

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Vancouver, do you mean that the RSS feeds aren't working in your reader, or that you can't find links to the feeds on our site?

[Muzie]

Love the new layout and the reorganization of the topics. Great job!

[jturano7423]

Mick Weinstein.
Fantastic New Look!
Please continue your articles regarding BIOTECH, they are so
informative and resourceful to me and I'm sure to other readers too.
Best of all your authors are writing precise data and unbiased opinions giving the shareholders and investors the most realistic
viewpoints.
Best of Luck!
Most Appreciated!
jturano7423

[Daniel]

It looks great, I love it, It has very professional out look, excellent Job, Thank you guys.

[the_Bird]

I love this site, and by and large I like the new layout...

One area where it could stand some improvement, however, is with the comments. Under "My Seeking Alpha," I would love to have the option to see comments that I have posted, and ideally if there have been additional responses after the fact. Anything to help build a community, I know there are tons and tons of smart people around here, being able to debate and kick ideas around would take this site to a different level.

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

the-Bird, thanks for your feedback and suggestions. We haven't talked much about what's behind the new site -- a totally new publishing and user management system that should allow us to build exactly the features on your wish list. The reason this was such a large project for us was because it was about much more than a new web design, but that will only become apparent later. -- David

[the_Bird]

Nice to hear. I spend a fair amount of time at social networking sites related to my hobbies, but I have not yet found a community of investment personnel (and well-informed "amateurs") that is of any value. If Seeking Alpha goes in that route - that would be wonderful.

[sdrucker]

I did not see any announcement that this change was coming. I wish you had warned us. I thought something was wrong with my computer.

[User 99539]

I like the new site. Thank you.

[Straight Arrow]

I have only recently found your site, but it has been very helpful to me. I am interested in the Wisdom Tree group of ETFs, because they rate companies based on long term and increasing dividends, rather than selecting companies based on growth or future earnings predictions, as is standard practice, I believe, in all of the other ETFs. Their stratagy is based on the research of Jeremy J. Siegal, which he reported in his book "The Future for Investors." I would like to see an article on your site that compaired Siegal's theory with the usual investment theories of ETFs. Or maybe just ayour review of his book. Keep up the good work. Or if anyone knows of such an article I would like to be told about it.

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Straight Arrow, thanks for your feedback. We have a ton of articles about Wisdom Tree ETFs. As a starting point, look at the listing here, and the articles listed at the bottom, particularly the interview with Wisdom Tree's director of research: seekingalpha.com/article/30120-broad-us-... -- David

[User 104118]

At the top of the screen, the drop down menu of the different sections does not work. Is there something wrong with my computer or the site?

Thanks.

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

What brower (type and exact release) and operating system are you using? We'll try to find the problem -- it seems to be working for other people.

Sorry about the inconvenience! -- David

[BERON]

Hi.
I no longer get my ticker symbols. The system does not save them.
Thank you. SA is a great site.!!

[David Jackson, SA Founder]

Beron, do you mean you're not receiving articles by email? If so, were you subscribed to full articles or headlines only? We also think we fixed the bug on the email subscriptions page, so please try it again and let us know. -- David

[nukldrager]

SA is a great site, but it hasn't shown up in my email for 2 days. I feel like I'm waiting for the Wells Fargo Wagon now. Hope it returns soon!