Cat Stock Blog

So far we’ve had almost 3,000 visitors and 9,000 page views since Cat Stock Blog went live in early December 2008.

Fully two-thirds of a blog’s traffic comes in once and never returns. Perhaps a tenth stops by for a second time. In the early going a tiny knot of pioneers will see what the blog’s good for and start checking it out every day.

Right now I’m guessing my regular audience could fit into the back corner of a Burger King. There’s me and about a dozen of you. Lewis and Clark took a far larger crew to the Pacific Northwest by foot, boat and horse.

Between us we represent an untapped possibility: blogs about companies using publicly available information like news headlines and stock quotes to create an online community of people with one common interest: a company’s fates in the marketplace. Not just Cat workers. It could be Cat suppliers, trade magazine reporters, stock analysts, equipment operators, contractors, miners. All told we’re talking several hundred thousand people.

Look around and see if you can find anyplace on the Web attempting to bring these people together in a central location. I haven’t found one for Cat. I wonder how many there are for any other companies. I’m guessing not many.

If we’re wrong about this blog being built on a promising premise, the worst we’ve done is look at some cool tractor videos and root for Cat’s stock to rise. If we’re right, however, we’re true pioneers, like Lewis and Clark minus the grizzly attacks.

Just for the sake of argument, let’s presume we’re right. We won’t be planting any flags on the lunar surface, but we will be doing something rare and possibly original. That makes it worth a try.