Rich People G-Chat

Things that make me light up: typical girly stuff like cute kids/elderly people/puppies. Or descriptions of desserts (not even eating it. Just reading it: “A deep, molten well of flowing chocolate set in decadent cake”). Less typical: information. Lots and lots of it.

So when we received Bloomberg Terminal training today, I’d been expecting a snoozer but by the end found myself blown away. And remembering again one of the reasons why I am in this program- to gather, interpret, and produce information.

As I found out today, the Bloomberg Terminal is a special computer system that basically accesses loads of info, mostly but not exclusively financial. The sheer amount of data this system can conjure up boggles the mind (read: 88,000 functions). And at a leasing price of $25,000 a year, or about the starting salary of a journalist, it really ought to. Good thing the j-school gets it for free! Up to now, I’d never seen anyone using it before; it just gathers dust in the corner. I just used it to check email.

While I’m no business news expert, there are amazing features that have universal appeal. Such as:

- you can easily find out salaries of any CEO or big shot (not to mention education, dog names, etc.)

- you can read the news before it actually becomes a big deal, by seeing what items were most accessed down to the hour

- an exclusive job search engine that features listings not on Yahoo or Monster.com

- every economic, country, and company statistic you can think of put into context

- top economists’ analysis on everything, and not totally jargon-laden either

- extremely detailed and comprehensive law and news searches. Like Lexis or Factiva on steroids.

And the absolute best part: very accessible contact info. Direct line phone numbers and emails of serious power brokers. Whether or not you’d contact them, it’s nice to know they’re there and you can skip all the PR people. Plus there’s….an instant message function.

For example, we could see that Richard Fuld, CEO of Lehman Bros., was away from his desk at the moment for more than 20 mins. based on a yellow status sign (green: at desk). It’s like rich-people gchat. You can message any terminal user instantly.

“So that means… I could just message Fuld at any time?” I asked incredulously. You know, “Yo Fuld, what R U doing since U don’t have a job NE more? LOL.” Or maybe I could message Steve Jobs to ask for an autograph for my dad!

Hypothetically I could, I was told. And apparently before, some reporter messaged the former Treasury Secretary Paul O’ Neill when he saw him “online” and snagged an exclusive interview as a result.

Pranks to CEOs aside, I’m not sure what I’d even use the terminal for yet, but it’s an interesting instrument no? It was one of those moments when you just fall in awe of the enormous potential of innovation and technology. Amazing.

No wonder Mike Bloomberg is a billionaire and our mayor. Dang.