Expanding "Unstructured Universe" of Blogs Tapped by Web Trawling Software

In case it is thought that weblogs are merely a "vanity press" sideshow on the Internet, a recent article in The Financial Times is a reminder that blogging has become part of the financial mainstream. Faced with the fact that there are about 175,000 new weblogs created every day and that it is estimated that over 50 million blogs are now in existence, bankers and other professional market watchers have realized that a daily trawling of this additional source of information could give advance warning of meta-trends. As one example, 10 hedge funds are reported to be trying out a platform called "Monitor110" that acts as an aggregator and filter for market watchers trying to spot trends before they become widely known. The general goal of capturing "market chatter" has already prompted Yahoo! Inc to enhance its finance site with a blog compiling weblog postings from a range of financial professionals, something that Google Inc has also done. Consistent with earlier developments in information-gathering, as the practice of trawling the blogosphere becomes increasingly widespread, businesses may need to consider whether they will be criticized by stakeholders if they fail to incorporate this type of monitoring service in their business intelligence programs. For comments on the Monitor110 innovation, visit the TechCrunch weblog which describes itself as "dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies": http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z512219DD For the electronic version of the article from The Financial Times, "Market gossip goes high tech", see: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d9db82e0-48e4-11db-a996-0000779e2340.html Summary by: The Editor