The decline of TheStreet.com

Samanatha Masunaga of The Los Angeles Times writes about TheStreet.com, which could be delisted and closed at 84 cents a share on Wednesday.

Masunaga writes, “By December 2007, TheStreet’s shares were still trading at $15.92. At the time, plenty of businesses were willing to pay to get financial information.

“‘All the financial services did well,’ said Scott Gurvey, former New York bureau chief of PBS’s Nightly Business Report television program. ‘People wanted to know what to do.’

“But soon Internet giants Facebook and Google began sucking up digital advertising dollars, and more competitors entered the business-to-business financial news market.

“Today TheStreet competes with financial news services such as Bloomberg and CNN Money, as well as investor newsletters including the Motley Fool.

“‘It’s a different ballgame now with fewer players … to subscribe,’ said Gabriel Kahn, co-director of the Media, Economics and Entrepreneurship program at USC.

“TheStreet’s services have also been affected by the move toward high-frequency trading that relies on powerful computers and algorithms to make transactions in fractions of seconds. Demand for editorial products aimed at businesses, like the news service peddled by TheStreet, has suffered, Kahn said.”

Read more here.