Hermit Kingdom

Here's some disruption for you. It came to my attention yesterday that a major Wall Street firm has changed IT policy and is now blocking employee access to Bloglines, a variety of specific blogsites, and financial forums like Yahoo! Finance. I assume this is compliance-driven (i.e., to prevent employees posting comments which could influence share prices), but in an integrated house with analysts, sales and fund managers all theoretically trying to make money for the firm, one would think that access to any and all sources of information would be encouraged as part and parcel of the task at hand. (Not on company time, my boy. Get back to your desk and write some research on how important this blogging thing is going to be, whatever it is.)

"Blog, schmog," I can hear you say, "It's all trivia and cross-posting of old news, with some pet photos thrown in." Well, if one ever needed proof that some blogs deliver real news first, check out my virtual friend Om Malik, whose scoop on the Six Apart deal earlier this week has been referenced on other blogs 355 times (according to my Bloglines account), and Slashdotted to boot. Here's a deal that may have some implications on some real-life listed companies like Yahoo! and Google, though if you worked for Company X, you would have been out of the loop until it appeared on CNBC (if indeed that happened). If I were covering the financial sector, I would have some serious questions about company culture and management mentality within this firm.