Stocktwits – Happy 5th Anniversary

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.