Analyst’s View: Document Sharing Sites and Investigations

Posted on September 28th 2010, by K2 Global London Office

Whether we’re doing diligence on a potential executive hire, identifying and tracking corporate fraud, or developing strategies to deal with security threats, the most daunting moment in an investigation often comes at the outset, when we first realize exactly how much information we need to sift through. (As Bruce Goslin recently noted, the wealth of information available on the Internet just makes this harder.)

Most frequently, the first person to take the plunge into a sea of investigative data is the unsung hero of any case: The Analyst. Analysts have an array of tools and techniques at their disposal, but experience and judgment are their greatest assets as they slowly build a case from seemingly disparate and unrelated sources of information.

We thought it would be interesting if we presented an ongoing series of posts in which our analysts share a bit more about how they search, assess, and assemble information into a coherent case.

The first contribution comes from an analyst in our London office, and deals with ins and outs of conducting research via document-sharing Web sites:

Document sharing sites such as Scribd and Docstoc can be useful resources for gathering background information on companies and people you do business with. These sites allow content creators to upload and sell (and content consumers to download or buy) virtually any kind of document, from market studies to academic research to whitepapers. Scribd is one of the most popular document sharing sites, and claims to distribute documents to tens of millions of readers per month.

These document sharing sites are less refined than sites with strong editorial supervision or specific content strategies – they’re full of oddities such as romance novels and travel guides, and usually don’t serve up any damning, Wikileaks-style revelations. But for prospectuses, résumés, annual reports and the odd court case, these sites can be a gold mine.

Scribd and Docstoc are two of the most popular uploading sites, but there are many more out there, including those specializing in foreign language documents (eg. Docin.com for Chinese) and magazines and newsletters (Issuu.com). As with any Web source with virtually unbounded content, it takes some practice to use these sites properly, but I certainly think it’s worth the effort.

Our next Analyst’s View will focus on the differences between online mapping tools offered by major search engines. If you want to be notified as soon as it’s published, be sure to subscribe to alerts from “The Discreet Science” using the tools on the left side of this page.