To accomodate those who couldn t travel, the conference call allowed hundreds of analysts to hear a presentation and ask questions in real time. But access was usually restricted to investment professionals and often involved long-distance toll charges. Occasionally a friendly broker would loan you his access codes, some of which found their way to the Internet. As a result, conferences could be swamped. The Internet now provides a much more practical venue for the conference call.
Many firms now do.
People posting idle chatter now attract accurate responces from others who have heard the actual story on a conference call. As a result, the irresponsible postings are controlled. Naturally, investment professionals complain that this allows the novice to access raw information that needs interpretation by someone more knowledgable - namely such a professional. However, companies like the ability to make one public statement, and then be free from goverment limitations on how investment information must be released. And individual investors like it too, as access to this information gets them access to information that once only slowly reached the average investor.