I was excited to see Stocktwits mentioned in ‘Wired’ recently in an article entitled ‘Forget the Quantified Self. We Need to Build the Quantified Us‘. The gist:

The Quantified Us should be based on a select group of people who share similar goals, health conditions, or even similarity of emerging data patterns. They could be your friends, but they’re more likely strangers who happen to have a lot in common with you. We are already starting to see the beginnings of a Quantified Us movement starting to emerge, though we feel its full potential is untapped:

StockTwits uses a followers model, connecting investors who are interested in the same financial opportunities. Though the insights can be very timely and represent the sentiment of an informed group, the ‘group’ is just defined by who decides to follow who. There is no collaboration, because because no one is sharing their personal data.

The authors have some things right and wrong about our community. We use a follower model and we are all motivated to make money and learn the language of the financial markets. But, while we are a pseudononymous community, we collaborate all day. While most don’t share much personal data, the ‘US’ has a ton of power that is not all about data.

I think about this type of ‘what’s possible or ‘next’ for the Stocktwits community all the time. While I am no longer the CEO of Stocktwits, my domain experience and passion is the markets and investing. I intend to spend most of my remaining working life expanding on all we have built so far. It is not just about the data, it is about the community and brand that we are building together.

What other type of services does the Stocktwits community crave? My gut says that most of us would appreciate the opportunity to take our virtual and on-line community into the physical world. Maybe it is a Stocktwits work space in 5-10 cities around the country. Not your typical ‘prop desks’ centered around allocating capital, but having access to a wide range of traders and investors that normally would work from home offices. Places to gather to get pitched start-up ideas and learn about new tools and a place to run seminars for the sub-communities that are formed all day.

Most of us in the community do not fully appreciate the products/services that will soon be created using powerful API’s from Companies like Stocktwits, ChartIQ (disclosure: investor), Tradier and Robinhood (disclosure:investor). These services will expand and deepen the community.

While Stocktwits may own it’s brand and some of the data, the community can be harnessed for a lot more than just data.