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New NASDAQ social app is all a Twitter

Oct 26th, 2009
by Michelle Heath.
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TechCrunch reported yesterday about an interesting new iPhone app they came across in the App Store. It’s an official app made by the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ), the American stock exchange. In the words of TechCrunch writer, MG Siegler, “That itself is interesting, but perhaps even more interesting is a key functionality of the app is to highlight tweets about various NASDAQ stocks.”

Wait, this is the NASDAQ, right?

Here’s the scoop. The app is called NASDAQ Portfolio Manager and, according to TechCrunch, it’s pretty slick. In addition to providing all the real-time quotes and data you’d expect, it also has some pretty cool charting features and, IMHO, the most interesting part of the whole app is that it has a special view that integrates all the latest tweets about that stock, coming in from StockTwits. If you don’t know about StockTwits and you’re a Forex trader, you need to Picture 22check it out. The service is organized in “streams” and they recently launched a Forex stream, where you can see all the latest Forex tweets. A Forex tweet is denoted with $Currency pair (i.e. $USDJPY), and what’s even cooler is that you can sort the Forex stream by pair. Say you’re only interested in tweets about USD/JPY, click on the pair and just see that stream. We use StockTwits with our @Currensee Twitter stream to connect with influential Forex traders from around the world.

I love that an institution like NASDAQ sees real value in social data. Their new app shows the innovation that comes when you blend the conversation of the crowd with traditional data. The world is moving to a place where “how we always did it” just doesn’t do it anymore. In the old days, if the chart said go long, I most likely would. But today, if the chart says go long while everyone on Twitter is going short, I just might reconsider my position. It doesn’t mean the crowd is right, it just means I have more information and more resources to help me make a much more informed decision. Nicely done, NASDAQ.

A letter to Twitter: Porn Spam Must Die

Aug 21st, 2009
by Michelle Heath.
1 comment

Dear Twitter,

I am writing to you on this steamy New England day to vent my frustration, annoyance and overall dismay at the increase in porn spam over the past two months. I joined Twitter on October 29, 2007, long before Oprah joined and spam bots found yet another channel to clog up with their crapola messages.

As Chris Brogan penned in his recent post on Twitter spam, “…This is less-than-useful. This is the kind of behavior that will encourage me to pull back my participation on the platform.” Amen, Mr. Brogan.

Even with all the celebrity hype, jump the shark commentary and bandwagoning going on, I am in the camp of people who happen to find Twitter useful and I Tweet on a pretty regular basis. For those of us who do find value in your service, you need to figure out a way to keep the spam out, especially the porn. If half of my followers in a day are named Ellie69 or HotChick87 with messages like: “Bored!add me: myspacecica69@hotmail.com”, I will quickly grow tired of blocking them and cleaning-up after their mess. It degrades the experience for avid Twitter users and is something you guys need to focus on, especially considering that most Twitter users never tweet and don’t follow anyone.

So, what’s it going to be Twitter? Do you care to invest the time, money and energy to ban the porn spam? Or, do you let it continue and watch your frequent users fall into the never-tweet abyss?

Is Oprah Twitter’s shark?

Apr 17th, 2009
by Michelle Heath.
1 comment

Jumping the shark. Risky, dangerous and often fatal. The question is…can Twitter gracefully jump the shark and survive?

I have love this idea of jumping the shark. It is such an interesting phenomenon – one which doesn’t happen that often. I didn’t know much about where the term came from so I did a little research (god love Wikipedia.) The term was born from a 1977 Happy Days episode where The Fonz jumps a shark wearing swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket. If your shaking your head, your not alone. It makes no sense what so ever and appears that the producer was just grasping for material. Ends up that it was a pivotal episode and the producer, Garry Marshall, later admitted that “that he knew the show had lost something as the crew prepared to shoot the scene.” The show went on to produce another 100 episodes but things were never quite the same as those early Fonzerelli days.

Think about all the shows that you once loved that eventually died a slow death – plot lines thin out, bizarre characters are introduced and the quality of the show plummets. This sad but true happening transcends TV into our everyday lives. In my opinion, Starbucks (tho I love it so) has jumped the shark. Quality is not consistent and they’re everywhere. Used to be I’d literally walk a mile for a perfect non-fat latte. Now, I walk across the street and hope I get the “good latte” barista. As it relates to technology, who can forget the PDA – come on, you had one of these right? Oh, the little stylus and all my contacts in one place but holy crap. They completely missed the boat and got lost in the innovation of the smart phone. My kids now pay with mine and pretend it’s a Blackberry:) And who can forget the Walkman. Man, I thought I was so cool walking around holding my Walkman listening to my 80′s mix tape. Then along comes an MP3 player and out goes my Walkman with the trash.

So, now let’s talk about Twitter. I set up my Twitter account, thanks to the early-adopteritis of my friend Natty B, back in the Fall of 2007. I had no idea what Twitter was, checked it out and said to Nathan: “Who really cares what I’m eating for lunch??” Seriously, I just didn’t get it. But, I am social media girl and decided to give it a whirl. Put up my first tweet and was off following the few people I knew had any clue what Twitter was. I think I had a few handfuls of followers and the conversation was, for the most part, interesting. Lots of social media tips, ideas, news flashes, personal updates – I was in the groove. Then Twitter exploded with the digerati and the music set at SXSW in early 2008. My CEO started tweeting, we set up a corporate account and all my colleagues at matchmine (RIP) got in the groove too. It started to become useful in keeping up with people, getting interesting news and facts and learning more about how people think.

Fast forward to today, April 17, 2008. Some call it “Twitter’s big day.” Ashton Kutcher is on Oprah and is announced as the first “mainstream” user with over 1MM followers. Let’s just stop here – since when is Ashton mainstream? He is not a normal person on Twitter. He is a celebrity. Two very different things. And 1MM followers. BFD. How many does he know personally? I bet 4 – Ryan Seacrest, Oprah, Demi and Oprah’s dog.

Now let’s talk about the Oprah-effect. She can, in one show, make something jump the shark. I have to give it to her – that is some power, girlfriend. She has Twitter CEO, Evan Williams, on the show along with Ashton and BAM, in one day, I got about 50 new followers – 90% of which are, I hate to say it, total crap. I don’t have time to get to know these people and, quite frankly, I have nothing in common with any of them. Do I really care about some lady who likes to knit and is from Nebraska or some former weightlifer-turn-personal trainer who can pump me up? Does that make me a Twitter snob? Maybe. I find myself saying: “Remember when Twitter was…” It must be like the first person to have any of the deadpool devices listed above. Were they so over their Walkman when everyone had one? You betchya. That’s the way this whole thing works. The question now is what happens to Twitter? Can they jump the shark or is it so over? I have another theory on this but I’ll save it for a future post.

In the meantime, what’s your take…has Twitter jumped the shark or do they still have their Fonzarelli mojo?