Can Sex Sell Online Financial Content? (PLA, TWX)

Seeking Alpha founder David Jackson writes: Online finance site TradingMarkets.com has launched a stock picking contest. But this one is different: Playboy Playmates pick stocks, and you can view their portfolios in every sense of the word. Lindsay Vuolo, Miss November 2001, for example, has picked Bluefly (BFLY), Boyd Gaming (BYD), Google (GOOG), Research in Motion (RIMM) and XM Satellite Radio (XMSR).

Now, don't expect rigorous financial analysis. Boyd Gaming is a buy, Ms Vuolo explains, because "all the guys I know love gaming...and I think it's sexy. Besides...I live near Atlantic City and love the Borgota." Beats forward P/E ratios and EBITDA, no?

TradingMarkets's partnership with Playboy (PLA) suggests that the more acceptable side of the porn industry -- Playboy in particular -- may have more marketing potential than previously realised. And it also expains some of the attraction of recently acquired Weblogs Inc to Time Warner (TWX).

Here's why. I'd assumed that one of the challenges for most blog networks was that cross-readership between blogs is limited. The Seeking Alpha Network seemed to be an exception to that rule: if you're interested in the Media Stock Blog, chances are you'll likely be interested in the Internet Stock Blog; ditto the China Stock Blog and the India Stock Blog. We even set up a dashboard for the entire network at SeekingAlpha.com that lets you view all the headlines in one place. (If you haven't seen it, check it out -- it's really remarkable.)

But the cross-readership potential for the other networks just wasn't clear to me. Weblogs Inc has blogs about cars, gadgets, mortgages, and cancer. And -- get this -- Nick Denton's Gawker Media, the other leading blog network, has blogs about media, food, gadgets, and a blog about porn.

Where's the cross-readership there? Well, TradingMarkets' partnership with Playboy suggests that if people will read stock-picks by Lindsay Vuolo, the blog networks can cross sell anything...

Comments

[The UnknownProfessor]

I can just see guys telling their spouses, "But honey, I read it for the stock picks".

[Aiden Archer]

The truth is that selling is sex! There isn't enough space here to go into the many reasons why this is so, but if you're really interested check out sellingissex.com where all is being revealed .

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