On Verge Of Acquisition, Pioneering Social Media Archiver Arkovi Looks Back And Forward

I guess you could call me a homer—I root for the home team when it comes to expectations about where financial innovation can come from.

For example, the reaction to last week’s announcement about Intuit opening up the APIs to its financial data service (underlying Quicken, QuickBooks, Mint and FinanceWorks) was irksome to me. The news was framed in terms of the opportunity it represented for start-ups. Why just start-ups and newcomers? I think there are plenty of innovative-minded types within financial services companies today looking to create something new out of what they know.

Enabling Regulated Firms' Participation

All of which I mention by way of easing into today’s post, which acknowledges the work and success of a few guys who were inside financial services and saw an emerging business opportunity: Namely, that regulated firms’ use of social networks would require a permanent archive to retain the records of communications of what the firms and the employees said on others' platforms.

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Asset Manager Adoption Of Social Media, 1 Year Later

Today is the one-year anniversary of FINRA’s release of Regulatory Notice 10-06 Guidance on Blogs and Social Networking Web Sites, and I’ll be short and to the point in summarizing our view of the asset management industry’s adoption of social media.

Adoption is proceeding at a snail’s pace but it is underway. And, I’m surprised by the number of mutual fund companies (although far short of the majority) that are committed to trying something. Providers of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), where are you?

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