We are five years old this month at Stocktwits. Like Steve Martin in ‘The Jerk’ says…’The first year felt like three years and the second year felt like 2.5…’. Time in reality is just whizzing by. I love our product, brand and community as much as ever.
In the summer of 2008, the housing stocks were about to collapse, the banks were about to blow us up, and Apple still had its big run ahead of it (it would crash 60 percent on it’s way) . Tesla had just received $40 million and Elon Musk was in for $70 million of his own. My DVD’s were coming by mail and the post office still could not make money. My smartphone was a Blackberry. Today, I would rather have a Bitcoin than a Blackberry. Today, the big US banks are stronger (?) and meaner than ever, but you have still never heard of the best bank of our era…the Bank of the Internet (up 15 fold and based in San Diego). If you came to Stocktoberfest last year you sure would have. Today, Tesla is up 800 percent from it’s IPO and commands more attention on Stocktwits than Apple.
The core Stocktwits team of Phil Pearlman (editorial and community), Chris Corriveau (CTO), Sean Gilbert (Design), Dustin Schneider (Lead Engineer), Justin Paterno (Head of Product and he says no relation…) have been here from day one. They are warriors.
So many of our first contributors and community members from 2008 are still sharing away, writing books, starting funds and new RIA businesses. It’s fun to see our own Josh Brown on CNBC’s Fast Money every day. There are so many more people on the streams who have bright financial futures ahead of them in money management and media.
Our vision remains the same – to help create and be a leader of the global/social financial web (now more mobile than ever); and to connect people, ideas and services with each other. Fred Wilson took one look at what we were doing in 2008 and said..’If you love stocks and markets and you love talking about them all day long…Stocktwits is for you’. I can live with that too.
As I said on CNBC Fast Money last week (starts at minute 7 and is worth a watch), Stocktwits is a new ticker – it’s social, it’s mobile and it’s infinitely curatable.
Year six is going to be more of the same with a major dash of mobile. We will be launching our brand new apps this week. There will be better communication features and I expect to work on some cool search features to make it easier to see what we were were thinking and doing with stocks in the past. Our API is in the hands of hundreds of engineers and financial service businesses, so I expect some fun and exciting breakout surprises will surface in the coming months.
The feedback from the community is what excites us most and keeps us motivated to execute and show up every day. Thanks so much and keep it coming.
lol, I’m not quite sure what he meant by “that’s just not real to me” ??
Oh well, stock twits is still something I believe in and will only get
bigger and better from here.. glad to be a part of it
+1
thanks gents
Congratulations!! Always great respect ….. Love to talk about what’s going on in the
‘old world’ anytime if/when/ever!?
How do you get around the Twitter terms and conditions on deleting tweets?
(Congrats on 5 years. You were the first that I saw to recognise Twitter and $tags.)
hi Paul – stocktwits is its own platform…we dont therefore have the sames t and c’s as twitter and we do not pull any twitter posts into stocktwits. Our users can push posts into twitter.
this is to awesome post.
West Texas Intermediate crude swung between gains and losses after
after the biggest rally in more than a week. Brent oil in London
fell for the sixth time in seven days.
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Congratulations, Howard. Well done, particularly the way you survived Twitter’s $ grab.
Thanks David – I would say that the $ grab we always felt was a boom for us as it attracted spam to them and would highlight the power of curation. check out $WAG or $HIT on twitter and see that i mean. What is/was upsetting is the hijacking of it and the sheer messiness they have approached the ecosystem. Time will tell if all the moves were smart though.
If Twitter is the new tape, Stocktwits is really providing it, so that means it’s not really “on” twitter.
Mazel tov for 5 yrs. In dog years, that’s close to your age in real :)
congrats on changing the game and thanks for helping me find my true peers
The whole team at ST rocks. It has helped me make money and helped me cut losses. Plus, at times it’s even a bit fun. One of the best programs on the web in my opinion. Thanks to you and the team.
I wish I could remember for sure, but I think Leigh Drogen linked to this in a blog:
http://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_currency_of_the_new_economy_is_trust.html
“The Credibility Currency” so to speak
Yeah. These days, I’m valuing a twitter user’s influence by their follower’s followers as a starting baseline. If all the layers check out, it’s highly likely the top person is a solid source, since they are being followed by seemingly solid people. Following/follower ratio and then tweet count/time-on-site ratio, on top of the Followers # is also a decent indication (basically how many tweets per added follower).
Definitely an interesting concept. Getting closer to a good measure of credibility…too bad Twitter is so stringent with their data.
I suppose it’s in the interest of money, but still lame!
Strange how you never mention Soren Macbeth when you talk about the founding of the company. He seems to have been erased from StockTwits history.
Well done and congratulations. It’s been a great partnership with you guys and I know CME Group has benefited from the relationship. I’m looking forward to the next year and those beyond as you and the team have really had a profound impact on the industry.
thanks for all the support. It has meant a lot to the company and team