The Question and Answer Board

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

SI got their start and was in their heydey because of the OTCBB stocks

That's what I was afraid you were saying.

Their heyday (in terms of posting volume) was largely driven by OTCBB (specifically, the huge flamewars in MTEI, RMIL, DGIV, etal) but that certainly isn't where they got their start.

The term "Silicon Investor" is a hint that the whole idea from the get-go was for the technology-inclined (at the time, most internet users were) to discuss technology stocks. That's why the URL used to be talk.techstocks.com

If you doubt this, go to http://www.sibob.com/threads.htm (only if you have lots of time or lots of bandwidth -- it's more than 2 meg) for a list of all SI threads that were in existence when I last published that list about a year ago.

The DGIV thread was created early in SI's "heyday". But 3 years after SI started. But if you'll search that list, you'll see that it's thread number 19292. About 18000 threads (containing about 3.5 Million messages) that're still accessible were created *before* that one. Most of which are for Nasdaq stocks.

So saying SI got its start in OTCBB discussion is a lot like saying MSFT started out as an OTCBB stock (I've seen that said -- many times). It just isn't even close to being true.

We're actually kind of unique in starting with an OTCBB focus then starting to get into other universes. Even RB started out with more of a Nasdaq/Listed focus but didn't really gain a large audience until the OTCBB people were booted off Yahoo and started leaving SI.