Mark Cuban Charged with Insider Trading: Just What Mamma Needs?
The Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban has been charged today by the SEC with insider trading. Apparently Mark Cuban dumped his shares in Mamma.com right after he confidentially learned about a stock offering from the CEO of Mamma.com. This was back in 2004.
Immediately after I heard about Mark Cuban being accused of insider trading, I went on over to Twitter to see what people were saying about it. If you didn’t know, you can use the search.twitter.com site to search and find what people are saying about a particular topic. You can also search for your company name or even your name or another keyword. What you might want to do is use the RSS feed of the query to watch or monitor the search query if you need to watch that keyword. I often look for my name and my company’s name to see what they’re saying, if anything.
I also took a look at Google Trends and noticed that the top search phrase is mamma.com:
I am not sure when the last time I went to Mamma.com was, but apparently their traffic is on the rise. Here’s an interesting stat from Compete.com:
Compete.com shows that there were over 1 million people who visited Mamma.com last month; which is a lot less than Google’s 129 million visitors or even Yahoo’s 125 million. But, I suspect that although they’re rising last month (October 2008), this Mark Cuban Mamma.com Insider Trading scandal might be just what Mamma needs to get popular again.
I know that this may sound rather opportunistic of me to say, but sometimes getting mentioned in the news can be something that will bring a brand back into the limelight: and really, it wasn’t anything that Mamma.com actually did, it’s something that Mark Cuban did back in 2004.
Let’s take a look at the search results for Mark Cuban on Mamma.com. By comparing them to the Google search results for Mark Cuban, I see that they really aren’t that bad. Mark Cuban is owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, and I’m seeing search results for the Mavericks as well as his blog and also a page about his appearance on Dancing with the Stars. So perhaps I will start using Mamma.com again. What about you?
Is this additional publicity just what Mamma.com needs to jump start the search engine again?
Update Mark Cuban has issued a statement regarding this through his lawyer.
Nov 17th 2008
damn that sucks for him.
Nov 17th 2008
crazy. he often bashes the wall street insiders on his blog yet he may have failed to live up to his own standards…
Nov 19th 2008
He probably won’t get any type of jail time just because he is well known & has money….It really bothers me that the rich just get richer and they get no concenquences for their actions.
Nov 19th 2008
Uhhh… only 26 results total found for “Mark Cuban” on mamma.com
Totally sucks… So I tried “Barack Obama”
33 results… Wow!
Hopeless.
Mike
http://www.wannadevelop.com/
Nov 19th 2008
There’s something bizarre about enjoying the downfall of the rich and famous. I have nothing against Mark Cuban, but at the same time I can’t help but feel some satisfaction for his trouble. It’s just one of those things where you have to wonder what that amount of money meant to him? Was it worth the risk? It’s like running back into your burning house to save your cat.
Dec 9th 2008
Well what can I say his Mark Cuban one of the most arrogant owner in the NBA, Look at where his Dallas team right now its just a matter of time and he’ll surely destroy this team.
Dec 31st 2008
There’s something bizarre about enjoying the downfall of the rich and famous. I have nothing against Mark Cuban, but at the same time I can’t help but feel some satisfaction for his trouble. It’s just one of those things where you have to wonder what that amount of money meant to him? Was it worth the risk? It’s like running back into your burning house to save your cat.