Starting today, when you’re talking about a publicly-traded company on Twitter, make sure you remember to use their new clickable stock tag.
It’s also being called a “Cashtag,” by some Twitter users. Whatever you call it, Twitter’s new hashtag functionality for stock symbols means that users can view streams of tweets about certain companies’ stock with ease.
The cashtags work like hashtags in that they are highlighted blue and clickable. Instead of the “#” that precedes normal hashtags, “$” precedes the cashtags (hence the name, I guess).
Now you can click on ticker symbols like $GE on twitter.com to see search results about stocks and companies
For instance, you may see $FB on Twitter now. Clicking on that cashtag will show you all the other tweets that mention $FB.
Congratulations Facebook shareholders. Your stock just blew through its all-time low, now under $22. $FB
Some are saying that Twitter’s new cashtags are cool and all, but they are simply copying features available on other services for years. StockTwit CEO Howard Lindzon said in a blog post:
It’s interesting that Twitter has hijacked our creation of $TICKER ie. $AAPL. It only took four years to ‘fill‘ this hole, though a few months back they told me in a detailed email it was not a hole they wanted to fill.
You can hijack a plane but it does not mean you know how to fly it.
Also:
People like that Twitter has added clickable stock tags ( eg. $FB ) to their web interface. Cool, but @hahlo has had that for about 4 years…
Either way, this could be a great way for Twitter users to compile real time stock information, although it’s unclear just how useful it is to obtain stock advice from the majority of Twitter users.
[h/t Mashable]
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