Why Seeking Alpha accepts anonymous posts

Eli Hoffmann, senior vice president of content and editor in chief of SeekingAlpha.com, writes about why the financial news site accepts anonymous posts.

A hedge fund manager is currently taking legal action against the site to find out who disclosed one of his investment positions before it became public.

Hoffmann writes, “I’m not going to comment on that case. But I do feel this is an opportunity to explain how Seeking Alpha’s contributor network works, why we allow contributors to write under a pseudonym, and what steps we take to ensure the integrity of our contributors – and perhaps dispel some common misconceptions along the way.

“Let’s start with the basics: What are we? At its core, Seeking Alpha is a crowd-sourced, contributor-driven research platform for U.S.-focused stock market investors. Because we’re contributor driven, all views you read on SA are those of our contributors (we have more than 3,000 active contributors). There is no house opinion.

“What is so powerful about crowd-sourced equity research?

“We are skeptics about the supposed objectivity of traditional media outlets and research providers. We think that Socratic debate – which gives both sides an equal say and allows the listener/reader to make up his or her own mind – is a far more powerful way for readers to develop an educated opinion. Seeking Alpha takes Socratic debate one step further by allowing not only authors but also readers to have their say using article comments, StockTalks and Instablogs. What emerges is a profound mosaic that frequently outweighs the value of any single piece of research. This idea was underscored in a recent Brunswick Group study which found that blogs such as Seeking Alpha drove 58% of all investors to do further research – double the influence of any other digital information source.”

Read more here.