I'm a Fool.
Written: Dec 24 '99
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Pros: Lots of good, free, financial advice
Cons: similar politics to epinions.com; a few ads here and there
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| Marc_K's Full Review: Motley Fool Message Boards |
I discovered the Motley Fool site last June, after hearing their radio show a couple of weeks in a row. Over the next several months, I kept finding more and more at the site that piqued my interest.
First was the message boards. A message board for every stock I could think of. One that discussed (the evils of) credit cards, one about budgeting, one about tax questions.
Next was the library of financial information. All about 401-K plans and IRA accounts (lots of really specific information I hadn't been able to find anywhere else).
Next was the love/hate lists ("love" just like the Web of Trust we have here; "hate" allows you to automatically skip over messages from people you would rather avoid) and the ability to recommend a post (somewhat similar, but a lot simpler, to our recommendation system).
Next was the portfolio tracker, and other tools to give me a real sense of where my money was going.
Finally, a few "off-topic" message boards where I met a community of friends.
I found that I was spending 2-3 hours a day just reading/writing messages. More time than I really could afford to spend. I had to wean myself down (deleting some high-volume messages boards from my list of favorites).
Over the last month or two, I've stabilized at about an hour a day. I still find it THAT compelling.
Pros:
* Lots of message boards on anything financial (and a few non).
* Message boards can be sorted chronologically, by thread, by number of recommendations, or by poster.
* Lots of well-written "library" entries on everything financial.
* Lots of ways to spend hours at a time (or is this a con?).
Cons:
* The "stars" people get (next to their names) after posting 50/250/500/1000/5000 posts can lead people to post junky messages just to get their totals up.
* The "Favorite Fools" list and "recommended posts" can lead to the same politics we have here with Web of Trust and recommendations (although you can't directly tell who has added you to their list, and you can't tell at all who has recommended which post, so this is a minor quibble).
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Marc_K
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Member: Marc Kriguer
Location: Oakland, CA
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 13 members
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