For years I have complained to anyone that would listen that a large quantity of content on the web is not dated and therefore useless. if soeone posts a review of an Apple Airport Extreme, how the hell am I going to guess what firmware revision they have if they don't mention it specifically and if they don't date the post? I would love to be able to sort searches by date, but since so much information has no indication of when it was posted or created and there is really no one following any standard to indicate this information in metadata consistently. Its a mess for the person trying to find content.
Well it has happened, that mess has caused a major issue.
Old story on bankruptcy wipes out shares of United Airlines
United Airlines Tallies Damage From False Stock Report
"Frank Ahrens, business reporter at The Washington Post, tried to figure out what happened."
FRANK AHRENS, BUSINESS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: "The simple answer is, it was a Google search. And Google discovered a six-year-old story on the Web site of a South Florida newspaper that did not have a date on it.
And, so, when Google found it, it applied the date of the search, put it on that story, popped it up on Google news. A human being saw it, took it as being a fresh story, "United Declares Bankruptcy," punches it into Bloomberg. It hits Wall Street.
And, within a matter of minutes, more than 15 million shares had traded. And United Airlines, already shaky, had lost 75 percent of its value."
Holy Crap! Sometimes I hate that I can predict the future... As more and more "stuff" gets dumped on the web, its only gonna get more confusing folks...ugh.
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