The Stocktwits Social Heatmap – Finding Signal inside Stocktwits

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  • on April 23rd, 2012

This morning we are live with a new section on our site called ‘Stocktwits Signals’ (top navigation bar from anywhere within the site or bookmark it now).  I am thrilled how people are thinking about and using Stocktwits. When I first showed Fred Wilson the idea of Stocktwits in 2008, he said:

If you like stocks and you like talking about them all day long, Stocktwits is for you.

People that love stocks and talk about them all day long are a unique group.  They create a unique narrative and data set as they move through the site over a 24 hour period.  With our Stocktwits ‘heatmap’, we can offer an inside out view and begin to display the interesting signals and discussions.  We believe it will help more people engage and share. I think we can speed up people’s understanding of markets and the people mentorship model of the social web will work it’s magic once again.

The website continues to evolve as we grow.

As an investor and sometimes trader myself, I am excited to be part of a Company that helps disseminate, receive and organize market and stock information faster than ever before. Herb Greenberg, who has been covering stocks and financial markets for over 30 years said the following about Stocktwits:

Whoever thought I would be getting story ideas from the stock tickers that are “trending” real-time on a three-year-old site called StockTwits, which has become the Twitter of stocks? I certainly didn’t until I realized some of these out-of-the-way names were trending for a reason. Now, whenever I want to know why something is happening to a company, the first thing I do is check out the real-time feeds on StockTwits.

Price and volume data are a commodity in 2012. I have wanted to add a people layer ever to the equation since I got excited about the social/people web.

‘Big Data’ is the buzzword of 2012.  The social footprint is now a unique dataset for Facebook, Twitter, Stocktwits and hundreds of other companies using the open API’s of today’s social leaders to create derivative data points.

In the investment world, while the machines grind it out on the line of scrimmage, people should circling the machines. There are so many ways to connect the new data signals. Intuitively, I have my ideas around momentum and now I can connect a lot of the dots with partners and check for correlations. In fact, the stream is like a new ticker tape which I have called ‘The Human Ticker’.  I believe you can learn to read it.  Others just want to see visualizations of the footprints.

I don’t only want to know the breakouts and breakdowns and all-time highs or stocks hitting the 200 day moving average, I want to know who in my peer group is looking and what they are doing with the price and volume data. What they are sharing most. What they are ignoring and not talking about.

Trading and Investing does not need to be done alone. We look forward to your feedback. Also – Erin Griffith at PandoDaily covered the launch today as well.

 

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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