Julien Heiderscheid introduced Shiv Sharma, Eric Barden, and Ashish Garg from StockTwits to Trading Central teams to train them on StockTwits' features, especially its integration into "Market Buzz." Shiv Sharma presented StockTwits as a large social network for investors with unique news incorporating community sentiment and various curated feed and widget options. Participants discussed the integration of StockTwits' social and news feeds within Trading Central's platform, commercial and technical aspects including pricing and API availability, and potential future collaboration on content posting and co-marketing.
Details
- Introduction to StockTwits Julien Heiderscheid introduced Shiv Sharma, Eric Barden, and Ashish Garg from StockTwits to Trading Central's client-facing teams. The goal was to train the Trading Central staff on StockTwits to enhance their pitches with key selling points, especially regarding the integration in their "Market Buzz" product.
- StockTwits Overview Shiv Sharma provided a high-level overview of StockTwits, describing it as the world's largest dedicated social network for retail investors, founded in 2008 and no longer affiliated with Twitter, despite inventing the hashtag. StockTwits boasts 3.5 million monthly unique users across 200 countries, known for attracting active investors and facilitating trade ideas through real-time, social-oriented content.
- StockTwits Everywhere Initiative Shiv Sharma explained "StockTwits Everywhere," an initiative to extend the value of StockTwits' insights from its active user base beyond the core platform by packaging them in various formats. This strategy involves two main components: news aggregated from the community and widgets featuring sentiment and social feeds.
- StockTwits News and Widgets Shiv Sharma detailed that StockTwits' news is unique because it incorporates community sentiment, often highlighting retail bullishness even when a stock is down. They are also developing widgets for sentiment and social feeds, with various curation options like suggested feeds from vetted, credible users and feeds based on engagement (popular posts).
- Trading Central's Market Buzz Integration Julien Heiderscheid showcased Trading Central's "Market Buzz," an AI-powered news and social media portal already used by 80 to 90 brokerage firms. He demonstrated how StockTwits' social feed is integrated within equity pages, noting ongoing efforts to display the publisher's name and acknowledging the need to manage content, including potential curse words.
- News Feed Integration and Renaming Shiv Sharma inquired about integrating StockTwits' news into Trading Central's news section. Ashish Garg clarified that StockTwits has a separate news feed, distinct from the social feed, which can be directly integrated into the news tab, though it wasn't yet active due to the initial focus on social integration. Julien Heiderscheid mentioned the ongoing discussion about potentially renaming the "social" tab to "StockTwits" for clarity, given the decline of Twitter integration.
- Feed Filtering and Content Volume Ashish Garg pointed out that Trading Central currently has access to the raw StockTwits "fire hose" of data, but filtering options for "suggested" or "top" posts are available. Shiv Sharma mentioned the high volume of daily posts, in the hundreds of thousands, and the inclusion of content from India in addition to the US and Canada.
- Commercial and Technical Aspects Julien Heiderscheid outlined that the StockTwits feed is an additional, fee-based feed for Trading Central, representing an upsell opportunity. He also mentioned the availability of the feed in various formats, including API for customers who prefer direct integration over the "Market Buzz" iframe. There is also the possibility of involving StockTwits representatives like Eric Barden or Ashish Garg for demos with large potential clients.
- Pricing and Partnership Management Shiv Sharma and Julien Heiderscheid discussed pricing, suggesting a broad monthly range based on the brokerage's size, with individual fee discussions to follow. They also agreed on a process to vet potential clients to avoid pricing conflicts and to centralize communication through designated contacts on both sides.
- Value Proposition and Client Feedback Shiv Sharma emphasized StockTwits' core value proposition as providing trade signals through social community insights, sentiment indicators, news, and proprietary data. Lilian Appenheimer expressed excitement about presenting the social aspect of news to Trading Central's customers, who appreciate understanding the "crowd's" perspective.
- Contributor Validation and Feed Options Lilian Appenheimer inquired about the validation process for StockTwits contributors. Shiv Sharma clarified that the current integration uses the latest, real-time feed with moderation, but a "suggested" feed of vetted, credible individuals is also available. Ashish Garg further detailed the different feed options: "suggested" (hand-curated), "popular" (algorithmically based on engagement), and "top posts" (longer-form content with some curation).
- Feed Customization and Widgets Ashish Garg explained that users can apply filters to the raw feed to access different content types and that StockTwits is developing customizable widgets for sentiment, symbol information, trending tickers, and social feeds, expected to be ready in four to six weeks. These widgets will likely have public, rate-limited versions and full access upon login.
- Future Collaboration and Content Posting Eric Barden suggested ongoing collaboration on co-marketing efforts and PR. Julien Heiderscheid raised the possibility of Trading Central posting their analyst content on StockTwits for marketing and branding. Shiv Sharma was open to this, suggesting that curated Trading Central content could even be featured in a social feed.
- Content Posting Guidelines and Automation Shiv Sharma outlined that while they typically charge for content posting, they would waive this for Trading Central but emphasized the need to adhere to posting rules and avoid simply copying content from other platforms to ensure a good user experience. Manual posting was suggested as a straightforward approach, which could lead to Trading Central receiving a verified badge and inclusion in the suggested feed. Both parties agreed to explore this further, with Julien Heiderscheid requesting documentation on posting rules and potential automation .
- Conclusion and Next Steps The meeting concluded with mutual excitement about the partnership and the potential to generate value . Eric Barden mentioned following up with API details, and Julien Heiderscheid expressed eagerness to move forward with selling the integrated StockTwits feed.
Suggested next steps
- The client success and sales teams at Trading Central will learn about StockTwits and its selling points.
- Ashish Garg will share information on the separate StockTwits news feed for direct integration into Trading Central's news tab.
- Eric Barden and Ashish Garg will follow up with Julien Heiderscheid regarding the requested StockTwits APIs.
- Trading Central will explore posting their content on StockTwits, considering automation based on available documentation.
- Ashish Garg will send the integration documentation for posting content on StockTwits to Julien Heiderscheid.
