[Novalug] OT: stock prices and search engines and old news

Doug Toppin dougtoppin@gmail.com
Tue Sep 9 10:02:42 EDT 2008


there's a very interesting article in the washington post today about
a united airlines stock momentary nosedive (so to speak) yesterday
("2002's News, Yesterday's Sell-Off").  a news article from 6 years
ago inadvertently got posted by "third-party content-providers"  and
picked up by bloomberg financial news saying that
UAL had filed chapter 11.  the impact on the stock price was immediate
but short lived because it was detected quickly.  it does show that
you have to be careful if you're using 3rd party info on your
site/service and also raises the question of liability for
mistakes/accidents.   the story is pretty interesting.  it also brings
up interesting questions on whether it would be possible to manipulate
stock prices for short periods and profiting from them by influencing
search engines.  it's clear that any news/business related article
that is posted/indexed should also include a timestamp.  more than
once i've found old news that i didn't realize was old because there
was no obvious timestamp on it.  if you're providing a simliar service
you should read and think about it.

doug



More information about the Novalug mailing list