Tutorial: How to Succeed as an Industry Analyst
The amusement park industry is a rapidly changing landscape. With the country's current recession, even major entertainment conglomerates have witnessed a considerable amount of instability. The dynamic nature of the industry has consequently produced frequent news updates, which are difficult to track unless you are given the right tools. This tutorial will show you how to stay up-to-date with current events and how to gather new information as the industry continues to change.
Where to Begin
This wiki will be a valuable resource for information. Familiarizing yourself with the amusement park industry will (1) require you to read through the pages I have left in this wiki and (2) explore comprehensive amusement park databases which I will outline below. There are many facets to the industry. To begin, explore the industry's history and modern growth through the industry page. Once you have this understanding, you should read about Disney, Blackstone, Six Flags and Cedar Fair, the industry's new "big four." LovetoKnow offers a great database for more information regarding the industry's major amusement park operators.
Next, you should navigate through the current events page and investigate recent changes throughout the industry, including Six Flags' filing for bankruptcy, Blackstone's acquisition of Busch Theme Parks, Comcast's acquisition of NBC, Coney Island's Redevelopment Plan and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Theme Park.
Check out the Disney Parks blog, Worlds of Discovery blog, About.com Amusement Park blog and Theme Park Insider. These blogs will tell you everything you need to know about the latest in the industry from the perspective of amusement park enthusiasts.
Staying Current
RSS Feeds
It is crucial that you monitor the constantly occurring changes in the amusement park industry. RSS Feeds are a great way to keep track of the most current information on the industry's major operations. These feeds can be found on a number of web pages, blogs and even pages of search results! To start tracking RSS feeds, you should sign up for an account on either Bloglines or Google Reader. Don't worry, this process is quick and easy. After you have signed up for this service, check out a list of my RSS feeds in my blogroll. Of course, what would be the point of having an RSS feed reader without subscribing to your own feeds?
Save Time!
Finding new RSS feeds can be a painstaking process, but a set of good feeds can save you enormous amounts of time and will cater towards your personal convenience. Use Google Blog Search to search for new RSS feeds and blogs. Also explore my list of websites for some site-specific RSS feeds. You can also use a tool like Yahoo Pipes to combine multiple RSS feeds and create your own customizable feed!
Frustrated that you can't find a feed for that cool new page you found? It's okay, you still have a bunch of other options. For one, you could try creating your own RSS feed using a tool like Feed43 or Dapper. You could also create a page monitor using WatchThatPage, which will track any changes that occur to a user-specified page. Using a page monitor would be most appropriate for pages which are cluttered with information that would be difficult to obtain using RSS feeds or a page that is rarely updated (ex. static pages).
Finally, for your latest news updates, you can set up email alerts using a tool like Google Alerts, which will track any changes to a search results page (ex. Google News results) "as it happens," daily or weekly. Combining a number of these email alerts will save you the hassle of navigating to these search websites and entering multiple queries to find the news you're looking for. So what's the point of using any of these tools?
TIME. CONVENIENCE. ORGANIZATION. SIMPLICITY. USER-FRIENDLY.
Expanding Your Resources
News and blogs are great resources, but to obtain a holistic view of the industry, you will have to explore new websites and databases. But where to look? The web offers a number of useful tools to help you find the information you need. Look at the list below:
Web Directories
What are directories? Directories are valuable research tools that categorize links to websites on the web to make it easy for a user to explore a specific topic. The Google Directory and Yahoo Directory both offer sections that are specifically dedicated to the amusement park industry. If you're looking for a breadth of information, Google directory is the way to go. However, I would recommend using the Yahoo directory because it offers content that is much more useful. Of course, cross-referencing between both would ideal.
Deep Web and Library Search
Deep web search engines search the "invisible web," which are pages not indexed by general search engines. This content includes (1) disconnected pages, (2) pages consisting primarily of images, audio, video, (3) Flash, Shockwave, and compressed files, (4) content retrieved as a result of filling out forms, (5) real time information (although general search engines of recently started indexing this type of information), and (6) pages that are proprietary. In general, I found deep web search engines to be inferior to regular web search, but you can try using IncyWindy, which performed the best for queries related to the industry. Stay away from Google Scholar. Far away.
The MLibrary search can be a great research tool, but I didn't find it to be very useful for the amusement park industry overall. I would try doing some company-specific searches for the best results.
Video Search
Video search tools search for video content (self-explanatory). This can be done through a web video search like Google Video or a site-specific search like Youtube (which usually searches user-uploaded content). I prefer to use Youtube because it consistently returns reliable results. Truveo, a "deep video search engine", is also a good resource, as is Blinkx.
Image Search - Image search tools search the web for indexed images. These search tools can be general image search tools found on major search engines or tools that search a large database like Flickr (which strictly hosts user-uploaded content). Flickr is an excellent search tool for user-uploaded images. Bing Images was my favorite image search, although Google Images offered much stronger (and reliable) filtering options. I would give them both a shot.
Tag-Based Sites
These sites include social news and social bookmarking sites which place "tags" on its content. Overall, I found tag-based sites to be very unreliable for amusement parks, although Digg did offer some interesting/abstract information about specific facets of the industry. Social bookmarking sites are AMAZING tools. Before you do any sort of research, sign-up for either Delicious or Diigo.
Meta-Search Engines
Meta-Search engines combine multiple search engines into one convenient display. There are two types of meta-search engines: (1) unified and (2) integrated. Unified search engines combines the displays of multiple search engines, while integrated search engines integrate search engine content into one set of search results. DogPile is a fantastic integrated meta-search engine that accepts a number of different complex queries (something most other meta-search engines have a problem with). Since most queries related to the amusement park industry will be relatively basic, I would highly recommend using DogPile's search engine. Search.IO is also a great (unified) meta-search engine: after a user enters a query, it displays the results for every major web search engine in a tabular format. I wouldn't really recommend any other meta-search websites, but you're welcome to experiment with a site like Kosmix.
Google Custom Search Engine
This is a Google Custom Search created specifically for the amusement park industry. You can read more about this customizable engine here. In the future, you can further customize this search according to your personal preferences.
