Stocktwits has been growing fast this year. Our users are more engaged than ever — or “addicted,” as they often say on the stream.
Behind the scenes we have been working on a great redesign (coming very soon) and some improvements to our 5-star iPhone app. Our biggest new launch will be Search. We have over 5 years of data, and millions of messages on tickers and indexes that we want to give our members access to so they can locate specific messages from the past. Soon Stocktwits search will allow you to find a stream on any topic, person, stock or combination of the three.
To go with all the product improvements, we have made some changes to our board. Our awesome venture capital leads, Tony Conrad (True Ventures) and Seth Levine (Foundry) have stepped aside to allow Rob Peck and Ross Levinsohn to step in. Michael Parekh remains actively engaged on our board.
Rob and Ross will help us push even further into the realm of financial media and Wall Street.
Ross was introduced to me a few months ago by Mark Mullen, and, over a round of golf, I was blown away by his media resume. Best known for his leadership roles at Yahoo and Fox, Ross has helped build and operate both small and large-scale businesses. At Yahoo, Ross served as Interim CEO and Head of Global Media. Prior to that post, he was responsible for Yahoo’s largest territory as Executive Vice President of the Americas. He has also invested in more than thirty companies as both an executive and financier, which makes him a perfect fit for the Stocktwits board.
Rob Peck has been a supporter of the Stocktwits platform from the beginning. He is the head of Internet Research at Suntrust. Previously, he was a Senior Analyst at Lehman as well as Bear Stearns, where he focused on Internet and technology. Rob also led Internet Research at Baron Capital.
We’re bringing in these two smart media and finance gurus because we know business media is being disrupted by niche media platforms like ours, which makes now the right time to hit the gas pedal.
Paul Kedrosky had an amazing tweet with a graphic on the state of the business publishing industry:
Me-thinks the rise of passive investing is inversely correlated with declining fortunes of biz media … pic.twitter.com/mRBwwVBccb
— Paul Kedrosky (@pkedrosky) August 5, 2014
Paul believes the downward spiral is related to people becoming passive investors. “Passive is the new active” is a mantra by the Blackrock’s and Vanguard’s of the world. Our metrics prove otherwise: Active investors are alive and well.
We believe, and our data shows, that people are still interested in the market and just want to consume information in different ways. Stocktwits is real time, lightweight, social and mobile. It’s easy to catch up on the market using our trending ticker bar on both the website and mobile apps. We have a lot of room to grow.
The post Stocktwits Appoints Ross Levinsohn, Rob Peck to Board appeared first on Trends... Find them, ride them and get off..
