Commentary

Bloomberg Licenses Twitter Data

The worlds of business information and social media are fast converging, judging by a flurry of new deals between social networks and publishers of financial data. In the latest such tie-up, Bloomberg has signed a long-term agreement with Twitter, giving the financial information distributor access to real-time information from the microblogging platform on behalf of subscribers to the Bloomberg Professional service.

The Bloomberg Professional service now features financially relevant news from Twitter that subscribers can analyze, chart and share via Bloomberg Instant Message and Bloomberg Links. The content, available through Bloomberg interface commands, includes a live feed of relevant tweets, real-time alerts about important tweets curated by Bloomberg staffers, social “velocity” monitoring showing spikes in tweets about specific companies, sentiment analytics focused on specific companies, and translation of curated non-English tweets.

Bloomberg global head of product Ben Macdonald stated: “Our customers have told us that Twitter helps them uncover early trends, breaking news, and sentiment shifts, which may be indicative of changing market conditions. By incorporating real-time information from Twitter into our customers’ workflow, Bloomberg makes this data accessible and discoverable so that our clients can react quickly to important news and trends.”

The move comes as Bloomberg faces new competition in the form of Symphony, a dedicated social network for Wall Street. Earlier this week the network, which incorporates instant messaging, Twitter, chat forums and internal feeds from big companies, announced partnerships giving it access to financial information from McGraw Hill Financial, Dow Jones and Selerity.

The publishers will provide a range of business news and information, including McGraw Hill Financial’s S&P Capital IT service, and Dow Jones’s complete live news feed, numbering thousands of stories at any one time, for $15 a month.

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