Introducing our Partnership with SecondMarket and Private Company Streams

I love stocks and I LOVE investing in startups.  About 8 months ago I started calling Facebook $fbook and Twitter $twit when I tweeted.  I felt the IPO market was struggling and it would be cool if Private Companies had a lightweight exchange or center of conversation to point people too to learn about them in real-time.  A place where employees and investors could get a pulse of what people were saying about private companies.

It would be cool for the Companies and REALLY COOL for STOCKTWITS is we could own all the company conversations on twitter.  When I had the idea and Fred Wilson noticed me doing it, at least he thought so and his hunches are better than mine.

Through a partnership with SecondMarket, the marketplace for illiquid assets, we are excited to deliver to our community at StockTwits the capability to comment on an entire network of private companies.  We love what SecondMarket is doing, and are delighted to be able to provide a real time messaging and idea sharing and messaging platform for them.

You will be able to find the Private Companies stream on the Stream Navigation Panel on the left side bar of the website.

Private Company Stream in Navigation Panel

To find a particular company’s’ ticker, simply browse through the Private Company Database and then tweet using that ticker symbol.

Browse through the Private Company Database
Once you find the ticker symbol, tweet about it and it will show up in the Private Company Stream

Each Private Company has their own symbol page, where you can easily view the tweets as well as view the company profile on The Business Insider, TechCrunch, GigaOm, CNNMoney, and TechMeme.  Check out this one for $SKYPE:

Each Company gets their own symbol page where you can view company profiles across the web.

We are excited to be working alongside SecondMarket and can’t wait to see the conversation surrounding private companies blossom.  It’s really going to be fun to see some of these great companies move from the Private Company Stream to the Public Equities Stream in the future!

18 comments

  1. byrneseyeview says:

    Ha, I think I asked SecondMarket *and* Stocktwits to do this. Extremely cool.

    Is the list based on what’s on the SecondMarket system, or another list? Could also be interesting to add secondary interests in hedge funds and PE firms (i.e. “$BX_CAPV” for Blackstone’s 2006 fund, or “$DESHAW” for D. E. Shaw), since SM is involved in those, and the folks who care about private company stocks may also have an interest in that kind of asset.

  4. byrneseyeview says:

    Ha, I think I asked SecondMarket *and* Stocktwits to do this. Extremely cool.

    Is the list based on what's on the SecondMarket system, or another list? Could also be interesting to add secondary interests in hedge funds and PE firms (i.e. “$BX_CAPV” for Blackstone's 2006 fund, or “$DESHAW” for D. E. Shaw), since SM is involved in those, and the folks who care about private company stocks may also have an interest in that kind of asset.

  11. Mark Essel says:

    This is a big idea that I believe will help out most private businesses that are struggling to lock down an identity. Don’t you worry little $FBOOK, Howard’s gotcha covered.Very cool, in an abstract shaping sorta way.

    Now to earn a ticker!

  13. Mark Essel says:

    This is a big idea that I believe will help out most private businesses that are struggling to lock down an identity. Don't you worry little $FBOOK, Howard's gotcha covered.

    Very cool, in an abstract shaping sorta way.

    Now to earn a ticker!

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