Today, I get a DM on twitter from none other than StockTwits. They said:
“please stop promoting your free webinars on our stream. thanks”
Earlier in the day, I had mentioned our free webinar with Ruth Barrons Roosevelt on my twitter account.
I’ve come across this issue a lot recently. Services like this, and trading forums, have it backwards in my opinion. They put artificial value on a bunch of amateurs having endless banal conversations. “Oh no my $GOOG is under water. What now?” is a valuable contribution. “I’m hosting a free webinar with an accomplished trader, author, and psychology expert at my expense” is unwanted spam.
I understand why sites like this adopt such severe stances against promotion, but if you can’t find the baby then check the bathwater, ‘cuz I think they were thrown out together.
Not to mention, out of curiosity I went to look at their “stream,” and on the first page alone I see all kinds of promotion. Here’s three items in a row, even (click to enlarge):
In fact, nearly every post I see has a link to something. I’m sure they’ll all be getting similar DM’s telling them to stop, real soon. Yeah, right…
Of course, not every tweet was a promotion. Here’s a valuable entry that I’m glad I noticed:
But, it’s their service and their arbitrary terms of use, so I didn’t complain. Instead I asked how to opt out of their tweet-sucking service. You see, all I did was post to twitter… they pulled my message into their stream because they look for stuff with dollar signs in it. I think they started doing this the moment I ‘followed’ them on twitter. Now they want to tell me what I can and can’t say.
I guess if I posted some perl code, they’d turn around and advertise that on their stream, as well! my $var = 69, fuckers! Deal with it.
Services like this have their appeal, especially as a sort of social gathering place, and God bless ‘em for that. Check StockTwits out, if you haven’t. Maybe you’ll like it. Still, I want the free use of my ‘$’ key back. Stop sucking on my tweets! :-)
i am sorry you feel this way. the $ symbol is a great way to organize market related information.
at stocktwits we see a lot of links to outside premium services, penny stock scams, etc. because we cannot verify the integrity of these services, we generally do not allow them to be promoted on our stream.
when i see something like “check out this free X”, i immediately ask myself “what is this guy selling?” there are times when i get things wrong, and i might be in this case. unfortunately i just dont have the time to vet every single service, webinar, etc, that comes across our stream.
we allow and often encourage tweets to be supplemented by blog posts or other useful articles (as long as it is NOT blatant promotion of one of the services i mentioned above). the use of url shorteners is encouraged.
you are correct, there is definitely noise on stocktwits. however, you fail to mention that many tweets add value which often help community members learn and make real money.
yesterday we released our stocktwits desktop app which includes features to help reduce noise (http://desktop.stocktwits.com). this platform is independent of twitter.
>> $var = 69
if you were following stocktwits and tweeted this or something similar, it would show up on our stream. this happens occasionally and we usually let it slide. it only becomes a problem when you see things like “free ca$ino.”
i would like to see you give stocktwits another shot. i am certain that you will find real value.
Like I said, I understand why you do it. I also stand by my assertion that you and other services are losing something in the process.
Most things of value are created by commercial interests with profit motive. Surely you are acquainted with the notion of capitalism. So, you are turning away useless spammers, no doubt, but in the process you are cutting out the source of most things of value.
I see in one of your blog posts that you let promotion slide if they also post lots of non-promotional stuff. Guess what? I’m too busy creating actual value to post banal “hey what’s up with $AAPL?” comments all day in hopes of living up to your subjective standards.
I know I’m just whining and have no real suggestions for you. Maybe forums with anti-commercial stances should set up an area that’s for vendors, and limit posts there to 1 per day or something.
Anyway, I still don’t know how to turn stocktwits “off.” I unfollowed StockTwits, is that sufficient? I don’t see anything on the website that tells me how to quit, and I still haven’t received an answer over DM on twitter. Do I have to block StockTwits? That seems pretty extreme.
i dont disagree. as previously stated, i am human and can make mistakes.
again, while there is noise, there are plenty of tweets on our stream that add value.
we are not anti commercial. we are anti spam and scams. where there is stock discussion there are penny stock scams. we cannot have a forum for vendors to make one promotional post a day because we cannot have legitimate promotions mixed with scams.
i dont have a good answer for rogue $ signs on our stream (eg $var = 69). people are certainly entitled to tweet these things which is why we let them slide.
however, it is frustrating when people tag promotional posts with $$ at the beginning or end of a tweet. stocktwits invented this on twitter. it is one thing if someone uses that on every tweet because they like $ symbols, but when it is selectively tied to a promotion, i find it hard to believe that they don’t know what theyre doing.
you will not be picked up by our stream because you have stopped following us.
Do you think, in this world where anyone with $9.95 can own a domain name, that commercial endeavors will forever be guilty until proven innocent?
I guess the ratio of scams to legit services changed dramatically in recent years. If every business still needed an office and VC funding maybe things would be more friendly to my kind.
In all of these social websites, it’s only natural for me to mention what I’m doing, because… well, it’s what I’m doing. It’s not much fun to be ‘marked as spam’ all the time (once I was moderated as spam for visiting a thread devoted to my work! I couldn’t believe it!). I guess that’s just the cost of doing business today.
we will continue to monitor the stream for the same reason you moderate your comments.
its not perfect. this is our policy and we are sticking to it.
Wait a minute… they suck your tweets because you are following them? Isn’t that totally backwards? If they don’t like your tweets on their system, they can turn it off. If they are abusing the system by doing it backwards, that’s their own problem, not yours.
taotree: It is the opposite of the twitter ‘whitelist’ philosophy, for sure. I guess they would say I implicitly agreed to their terms of service when I followed them, or something. Now that I know how to keep them from repurposing my tweets, I wish them well.
To me, the only interesting thing about this is the big picture. Anti-commercial communities are such a fad right now. This feels just like 1998 when everyone thought “open source” software would take over the world. Only problem is, commercial interests are the primary innovators. If I want to learn something, would I rather pick the brains of google scientists or some group of hobbyists? The answer is clear.
The hard question is, how does a forum or community reliably separate the scams from the legitimate commercial interests? I don’t know. What I DO know, is that I don’t care what random folks think about AAPL, except maybe to fade their losing trades (which I used to do on wallstreak.com back in the day). Services like that are just not for me.
(to be honest, the main reason I made this post is because I think the phrase “stop sucking on my tweets” is funny. With proper marketing, it could be the next “don’t tase me, bro!” Services built on user content have constant spam head-aches, and I don’t hold anything against them for de-valuing themselves through draconian policies. I just wish there were a better way.)
SPAM SPAM SPAM Glorious SPAM!!
Richard, I back you 100%. The whole point of Stocktwits is a “let the content be the authority” model. They constantly rail on CNBC (and correctly, I might add) for having a High Priesthood of Media where the TV host and channel brand is the only authority, and content is secondary. For a bunch of “angry bloggers in pajamas” as Dennis Kneel (sic) is fond of saying, the team at Stocktwits seems to be turning into the thing it has fought for so long with a policy like this.
If a person does nothing but spam their service (not that you do, Richard, but that’s who they are targeting) then leave it up to the users to decide and not follow them. Content should be judged based on its own merit, or it’s just CNBC in pajamas. Fine, block content providers that generate legit complaints from users or if you find proof of fraud, otherwise, “Don’t tread on tweets”.
Yeah, twitter is a whitelist system… the users could block anyone they feel isn’t being useful.
I honestly don’t see the need for a service like stocktwits at all, when twitter has a native search. People should just use #mkt (lots already do) and skip the middle man.
The longer I monitor their precious stream the more annoyed I get. When’s the last time trade-ideas posted something that wasn’t a tease for their paid service? Look at how many douchebags tweet every blog post they write. Now look at us. We hold promotional events every week, and I pick this ONE to tweet about, because we were specifically NOT advertising for ourselves. And yet, I am told to stop.