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Twitter introduces cashtags to let you track stocks

Twitter introduces cashtags to let you track stocks

By KS Sandhya Iyer | Updated: 31 July 2012 16:33 IST

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You've all heard of # hashtag, a term and symbol highly used by Twitter users. While #hashtag has now evolved into Twitter's "Discover" tab, a new symbol takes shape that Twitter likes to call "cashtag".

Cashtags symbolised by the $ sign that are prefixed with any ticker, will allow Twitter users to view search results of a company's stocks and finances. Clickable ticker symbols like $AAPL, $GOOG, $FB or $GE, as quoted by Twitter will reveal all tweets under that ticker.

Post introducing the expanded tweets feature, Twitter aims to keep users on twitter.com rather than they clicking away.

StockTwits co-founder and CEO Howard Lindzon charged Twitter of "hijacking" the $ stock symbol, which was one of the company's main features. He further added that Twitter had recently declined its interest in making its own cashtags. But the move from Twitter seems contradictory.

Here's quoting Lindzon's exact words from his blog post titled "The Twitter Hijacking of Stocktwits $ ... The 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."

As of now, the cahstags take users to a Twitter search of the ticker symbol but don't yet show any expanded information within the Twitter service. But Twitter will soon change that.

Now you can click on ticker symbols like $GE on twitter.com to see search results about stocks and companies
-- Twitter (@twitter) July 31, 2012

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