Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:29:52 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110110/13272712595/50-cent-using-twitter-to-pump-up-stock-is-it-legal.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110110/13272712595/50-cent-using-twitter-to-pump-up-stock-is-it-legal.shtml started pumping the stock symbol of a penny stock for a company that is distributing a new pair of headphones that he's associated with. The stock then surged, increasing the company's value by $50 million. Oddly, when I look at the Twitter account of 50 Cent, I no longer see the Twitter messages in question, which makes me wonder if he realized he might get in trouble for those tweets. Of course, there's nothing wrong with giving stock advice but if he didn't disclose his own association with the company, he could run into serious legal problems from both the SEC and the FTC, who have been looking to crack down on "sponsored" tweets that don't properly disclose a relationship.

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]]> seems-sketchy http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110110/13272712595 Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:48:14 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081020/1905292600.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081020/1905292600.shtml where our elected officials invest their own money, noting that an awful lot of it has gone into tech companies. For example, the second, third and fourth most invested in company among Congressional members are Cisco, Microsoft, and Intel, following on GE, which had the largest number of lawmaker investors (88). Of course, the number of investors doesn't necessarily say how much is invested, as Apple leads on that list, with Congressional members having put somewhere between $6.4 million and $31 million into Apple. Elected officials only need to give a range for their investments, hence the large spread. Of course, all of the info in the article isn't really all that enlightening, as the companies that these folks are invested in are basically the same as you would find on a list of the biggest companies in the US. So, basically, our Congress critters invest in big companies, many of which are in the tech industry. That's not particularly surprising.

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]]> not-much-to-glean http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081020/1905292600