Last night Twitter announced that the usage of the cashtag (dollar sign in-front of a stock symbol) will now direct users to a search on the specific stocks and companies. The dollar sign now joins the @ and # symbols as being the only official interactive operators.

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

The cashtag was created and popularized by StockTwits, a social community for traders & investors. StockTwits used the cashtag to aggregate updates and conversations on specific stocks. Howard Lindzon, founder of StockTwits, isn’t impressed with the official Twitter usage of the cashtag. On his blog, Lindzon states:

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.

StockTwits is an inherently different service, more focused on curation and a financial community, but Twitter may be on their heels in an attempt to provide value around stock tickers.

The $ sign is now active on Twitter and any instances will now direct users to Twitter search results.

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Twitter

About The Author: Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that specializes in social media and search marketing services and web-based application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 6+ years and specializes in Social Media Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn. See more articles by Greg Finn

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