Dueling Fools
July 28, 1999

Cramer v. Cramer
The Bear Rebuttal

by David Marino-Nachison ([email protected])

I'll get this out of the way early -- I really don't have much bad to say about the quality of TheStreet.com's content or services. They're good. Notably, the company's writers have been known to move markets and some really valuable investigative work has turned up on those pages.

I'm not, however, convinced that the majority of TheStreet.com's readers care. If I'm right, they're missing out -- and not because of a lack of promotional spending on the company's part.

Now back to Brian's worthy bull argument, in particular the section in which he notes very correctly that "Wall Street pros are willing to pay top-dollar for the most current information available."

They are: my previous employer was a wire service for professional investors that charged readers $1,500 per month. If TheStreet.com is going after that market, something tells me they're at the wrong price point. If the company's aim is to ingratiate itself to users to the point where they'll pay anything for a fix, I'd say that's certainly an interesting plan but it seems unlikely.

The thing is, while the company's stuff is great, there are plenty of competitors out there who don't charge at the door and offer similar goods. The resources out there in cyberspace are, frankly, amazing. Image aside, how much more than nothing are you willing to pay to read a few more news stories?

The mass market, you see, has yet to show much support for online content that costs money, however reasonable the price. As Internet usage continues to grow, you can bet that while more people might be reading the daily newspaper, so to speak, less of them will be paying for the privilege of holding it in their hands.

Indeed, all indications are that TheStreet.com will continue down the more democratic of possible paths, expanding its free offerings and relying increasingly on advertising revenue, with subscribers more or less representing a side order of gravy. As that happens, advertising rates will fall.

Will that make for a great investment? You'd think so, given the strength of the company's offerings. But I've yet to be convinced that TheStreet.com has done an effective job of marketing itself well despite laying out some pretty heavy cash to do so.

Put another way: would you invest in TheStreet.com if Cramer left tomorrow? I've got no reason to think he will, but so what? Losing J.J. would only moderately affect TheStreet.com's usefulness to investors -- the aforementioned message boards are in the plans and it seems likely that future incarnations of the site's interface will offer everything an online investor could want, and then some -- but it would be murder for the company's cachet.

In closing, I'll steal a page from TheStreet.com's own Hammerin' Herb Greenberg. I've designed a new Internet measurement metric: the "Foolish-Duel-'But If'-O-Meter," a gauge of how many times a duelist uses the phrase "but if..." in his or her argument. Whoever uses it more, I've come to suspect, is doomed to fail.

Brian 1, Dave 0. But who's counting?

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Also Check Out the Duel Flashback: Berkshire Hathaway