San Diego’s StockTwits is developing a bit of a Canadian accent, eh, through a partnership being announced today with Toronto-based Q4 Web Systems, which provides online investor relations services for publicly traded companies throughout North America.
StockTwits is an online social media network that enables traders and shareholders to share their market insights, ideas, charts, and news in real time via Twitter. The startup structures financial and investor-related information from its Twitter feed by stock, user, reputation, and other criteria. StockTwits also enables users to save the stocks they follow to their own portfolios and to limit the comments tweeted about each stock to trusted sources.
As I reported last summer, the four-year-old startup has determined that its chief source of revenue also lies with the investor relations and public relations units of publicly traded companies.
By introducing a ticker tag symbol for publicly traded stocks, $(ticker), StockTwits makes it possible for public companies to sign up for a higher level of StockTwits’ Web service and to “claim” their stock tickers. Once claimed, a company’s IR and PR teams can use the ticker tag to distribute corporate information over the Web in real time.
By partnering with Q4, StockTwits plans to integrate its services with the subscription-based services that Q4 provides its corporate customers. Q4 says its website services include more than 30 IR “best practices” modules that help companies properly provide information and other services to investors and shareholders.
“We’re working with them to make it easier for people to use both of our products,” says Francis Costello, StockTwits’ chief operating officer. He tells me StockTwits has more
