quietly unveileda new feature that will allow users to click on stock symbols in their newsfeed to see search results for different companies. The head of a company that already has a similar feature accused Twitter of "hijacking" the idea.
Source: Twitter.com
The stock results aggregator works much like the hashtag feature on Twitter.
When tweeting about a company stock, users can place a dollar sign in front of the ticker symbol to make it a hyperlink that will send users who click on it to Twitter search results for that stock.
The social media company made the announcement Monday night via its
Twitter accountand gave the example of General Electric appearing as $GE to generate search results.
Twitter users are calling the new hashtag-like feature the "cashtag," but for those familiar with Twitter, the company's new search function strongly resembles an application that already exists on the Twitter platform called StockTwits.
StockTwits is a financial communications platform that also utilizes the dollar sign in Tweets as a way of organizing financial commentary on Twitter and other social networking platforms such as Facebook and Linkedin.
Howard Lindzon, CEO of StockTwits, was not too happy about Twitter's new "cashtag."
"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 ...
I am disappointed of course that Twitter is hijacking our idea and time (will only confuse the masses), but Stocktwits moved beyond that basic functionality 4 years ago. In a dirty way, it’s the ultimate compliment so we will take it as such for the moment and keep rolling out functionality that makes us the best real-time communication platform for people that love stocks and markets.
Twitter did not immediately respond to request for comment.
email: tech@cnbc.com
