One reason we launched Alacra Street Pulse is that the influence of the sell-side analyst is clearly waning. But this article I found via Research Recap took me by surprise:
The post describes an Information Week article entitled IBM to acquire Sun? Twitter users not convinced. The article first quotes Forrester analyst John Rymer, who provides his insights on the deal. So far, so good.
Next, it goes on to cite three unidentified Twitter users' comments:
- Anonymous user 1: The buyout would bolster IBM's heft on the internet.
- Anonymous user 2: Will IBM keep both DB2 and MySQL?
- Anonymous user 3: Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Cisco will have to rethink their strategies
Now, this is the high-tech equivalent of randomly asking three people on the subway what they think of the deal.
The article concludes with comments by Dana Gardner, who serves as president and principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions and authors the BriefingsDirect blog. Dana has covered enterprise software and infrastructure for more than 17 years, as an editor and an IT industry analyst, so I'm pretty comfortable with where he's coming from.
But three random tweets?
And, even if you want to assign "expert" labels to these three unidentified tweeters, how does that support the premise of the article? The article is entitled "IBM to acquire Sun? Twitter users not convinced". Were the users not convinced that IBM will acquire Sun? Actually, sounds like they think it's a done deal. Were they not convinced that it will be a good deal? The comments are either neutral or positive.
That's not to say that Twitter can't be used for market research or analysis. Clearly it can and sites like StockTwits show how you can quickly see response to a potential deal. But random quotes from unnamed sources didn't fly in traditional media and shouldn't be acceptable here either.
As for me, when I'm looking for analysis on the IBM-SUN deal, I'll look at this page on our own Street Pulse. It includes the Rymer and Gardner comments and adds those from analysts at BMO, Citi, UBS, Yankee Group, BarCap, IDC, Goldman Sachs, Illuminata and a dozen other industry leaders, along with blogs like Tech Trader Daily, Dealbook and GigaOm. Random tweets are fun for finding pictures of cute puppies or the latest exploding Mentos video, but for analysis, I'll stick with credible sources.
