Earlier today we launched a new feature set: the Ability to Follow Stocks and the new Home Stream.
It’s our view (and that of hundreds of investors of all types we asked) that Watch Lists are too hard. They are a pain to maintain. They often get ignored and neglected. We are all now creatures of ‘sharing’, ‘liking’, ‘friending and of course ‘following’. On StockTwits we are interested in following people and stocks.
The new Home Stream brings all of that to you with a simple FOLLOW. Follow a person, follow a stock, and get the information you want, in real time.
While this may not seem all that new at first, I believe it has the potential to be quite powerful as we begin to develop the Social Finance Graph.
Mark Zuckerberg believes that he owns the social graph. I think there will be MANY social graphs – especially as social networks form around verticals such as finance. This past weekend Naval Ravikant and Adam Rifkin over at TechCrunch made a great argument on Twitter being undervalued. One main reason that they give is Twitter being built on a social interest graph – shared interests. Facebook is who you know, while Twitter/StockTwits is both who you know and what you like/trade/invest in.
They write:
Facebook, as we noted earlier, maintains two separate graphs from the user perspective: a social graph and an interest graph. For most Facebook users, the former is vastly more important than the latte—no one joined Facebook so they could follow Justin Bieber’s Fan Page. Twitter’s graph by contrast is fully interest-based: people use it to stalk celebrities, not to stalk ex-girlfriends from high school.
StockTwits is a network based on social interest. We are largely a community of people who have NO real life ties but a shared common interest – markets and finance. We have self organized into various groups largely around asset class, market approach, and time frame. The ability to follow Stocks adds another layer of interest and gives us a true Social Finance Graph. Now that stocks are an object to follow, not only will we have a graph based on who is following who, but who is following what. The Human Ticker gets even MORE Human. Tickers are socialized.
This has enormous disovery potential. Here’s a few things I think we can do with the Social Finance Graph:
Now you can wee what stocks your others are following, and who is following your stocks. This is a killer way to find new people and new ideas. Here’s some of the stocks I’m following.
The Social Finance Graph will enable us to suggest stocks for you to follow based on the people you are following, and vice versa.
- Break down follow interest of stocks based on profile data. For example, we will be able to show how many day traders, swing traders, value investors, etc are following a particular stock.
- List the most followed and unfollowed stocks of the day/week/month, or the top followed stocks that match your trader profile.
- If you don’t have time to consume StockTwits on our site, we can serve you up email with top tweets, charts, and news from the Stocks you are following. We can also send you push alerts on our new iPhone app when someone tweets about a stock or, even better, we can alert when a message comes in from BOTH someone you are following and stock you are following.
The possibilities are endless.
Needless to say, we are very excited about this small, but important feature we are adding so please go out there and start following stocks and let us know what you think!
Following a security is a pretty powerful feature, and a smart one.
I’d follow security information and feeds before following individuals who investment interests may vary from my own.
I’ve just followed 8 of my favorite currency pairs and will soon add my favorite equities to the list.
Thank Howard for the feature! :)
This is an awesome idea. As a young trader I am always interested in talking to people who trade the same names that I trade and this allows me to open up a whole new network. In the future it would also be nice to be able to follow a whole sector. For instance, I trade oil services stocks quite a bit and rather than follow every single stock in the group, it would be nice to just follow the oil services sector, and have every stock in the group link to the stream. It would be a great way to stay up on the group to get an email every day from Stocktwits with all the posts on oil services from that day.
great stuff @ntomaino. thanks for the thoughtful input.
yes topics and sectors like gold and inflation
Killing it. :)
coo. glad u like
This is an awesome idea. As a young trader I am always interested in talking to people who trade the same names that I trade and this allows me to open up a whole new network. In the future it would also be nice to be able to follow a whole sector. For instance, I trade oil services stocks quite a bit and rather than follow every single stock in the group, it would be nice to just follow the oil services sector, and have every stock in the group link to the stream. It would be a great way to stay up on the group to get an email every day from Stocktwits with all the posts on oil services from that day.
Following a security is a pretty powerful feature, and a smart one.
I’d follow security information and feeds before following individuals who investment interests may vary from my own.
I’ve just followed 8 of my favorite currency pairs and will soon add my favorite equities to the list.
Thank Howard for the feature! :)
coo. glad u like
Following a security is a pretty powerful feature, and a smart one.
I'd follow security information and feeds before following individuals who investment interests may vary from my own.
I've just followed 8 of my favorite currency pairs and will soon add my favorite equities to the list.
Thank Howard for the feature! :)
Killing it. :)
awesome, keep killing it stocktwits team! i bet the filtered email alerts will be *huge* – both as a user (esp for long-term investors) and also as a business model vehicle
“The Stocktwits Network” – coming soon to a theatre near you….
love this idea.
love this idea.
great stuff @ntomaino. thanks for the thoughtful input.
yes topics and sectors like gold and inflation
The follow feature would be more valuable with smaller, less-widely-followed stocks than with mega caps and mo-mo names. I know StockTwits is wary of shady penny stocks, but there are also some legitimate nano cap stocks out there. Those nano caps get no coverage by traditional financial media, and StockTwits could fill a real need for investors as well as companies here. You should open the stream to the small craft. Just hire a few Marines to keep an eye out for pirates.
we are sklowly creating the features that will allow smaller caps. if we
finally get to them in 6 months i am confidernt that cfowd willstill be
there.
That’s good to hear.
it’s really nice to see the evolution of the community and product. this is much easier to maintain than watchlists. you are committed to delivering your users a better experience and it shows.
it's really nice to see the evolution of the community and product. this is much easier to maintain than watchlists. you are committed to delivering your users a better experience and it shows.
awesome, keep killing it stocktwits team! i bet the filtered email alerts will be *huge* – both as a user (esp for long-term investors) and also as a business model vehicle
“The Stocktwits Network” – coming soon to a theatre near you….
This is really cool. Love it.
This is really cool. Love it.
The follow feature would be more valuable with smaller, less-widely-followed stocks than with mega caps and mo-mo names. I know StockTwits is wary of shady penny stocks, but there are also some legitimate nano cap stocks out there.
Those nano caps get no coverage by traditional financial media, and StockTwits could fill a real need for investors as well as companies here. You should open the stream to the small craft. Just hire a few Marines to keep an eye out for pirates.
Wow! Finally, someone knows how to project real value from a social network. Thank you Mr. Lindzon. Gratefully submitted. August Mezzetta
Wow! Finally, someone knows how to project real value from a social network. Thank you Mr. Lindzon. Gratefully submitted. August Mezzetta
we are sklowly creating the features that will allow smaller caps. if we
finally get to them in 6 months i am confidernt that cfowd willstill be
there.
That's good to hear.