So, the fact that he emailed me back was #Gshit. That grounded attitude that allows you to respond to emails on a weekend no matter how high up on the food chain you are probably has a lot to do with why he's so successful. I wrote him with a suggestion and a pitch to get down with tastytrade. If you don't know what tastytrade is it's a good ass network centered on investing/trading. it's a new network less than a year old but the info is top notch. You can learn a lot from how someone tells you no. Here's the exchange:
"Thanks Rasool! Appreciate the gesture and the very nice note. I am very familiar with Stocktwits, although I like when people come directly to us, they do have a small but interesting market share. In any case, I would be happy to review ideas from time to time and please continue to stay in touch,
Tom
Sent from my iPad
On Jan 29, 2012, at 11:30 AM, Rasool Cunningham <[email protected]> wrote:
> there's a screen cast feature on stocktwits where you can record 5 minutes of your screen per recording. If you did this once or twice a morning you will soon dominate stocktwits. the stocktwits platform is full of people looking for the info you all share on your shows everyday and they don't even know it exists.
>
> I'd like to work for you in some capacity, (preferably tastytrade social media guy) but I also like to help people. So I'm gonna send you ideas I have on ways you can reach and teach and help more people and If I never get a to work for you if you use the ideas @ least I'll have helped more people through you than I could have on my own (help leveraged)....
I'm confused by what he says here:
"I am very familiar with Stocktwits, although I like when people come directly to us, they do have a small but interesting market share."
And it's not just him, this is the prevailing bias right now in startups ran buy seasoned vets. They don't really want to use other company's as stepping stones. It may be a zynga stigma. Either way I don't understand this but you could fill the moon up with stuff I don't understand.
Me personally I would use them all, but there must be something that makes the vets feel this way. I could chalk it up to hating on each other but not in this case because I've seen Howard Lindzon, creator of Stocktwits on tastytrade and I saw no tension infront of the scenes nor heard anything about tension behind the scene. Not like I'm connected enough to hear everything that goes on but I keep my ear to the ground.
I see traders on twitter putting "%" in front of tickers and not the "$" which would send the tweets directly to Stocktwits. Some of these traders have their own companies or premium services. Why they don't use stocktwits is beyond me. With 406,000 people visiting stocktwits this month (according to Quantcast) why wouldn't you?
It's hard to find traders as it is. I've yet to bump into someone who trades just out and about. You may have better luck in NY or Chi-town but social network sites mitigate geographical barriers to potential customers. If Stocktwits was bullshit and they never improved on the platform or it was just a bad experience I could see not wanting to use it. But stocktwits is tight work. The chart sharing and screencast feature is really good stuff.
With the user base growing what's not to like? I racked my brain (which isn't too difficult) and the biggest con I can come up with is you don't own the content you post to stocktwits or any other social media site for that matter.
That shouldn't be a problem as long as the content you do own is good. If 400k people are using stocktwits and your on stocktwits your goal there should be to have 400k followers on stocktwits. The same goes for twitter.
According to Quantcast twitter had 87 million visitors this month. Compared to facebook it's not competition and stocktwits' 400k looks light, but compare that to your site's traffic.
If tastytrade has over 400k viewers or 400k subscribers or even close to that then yeah it doesn't make sense to use too much energy trying to dominate Stocktwits. I don't have access to tastytrade's numbers so I can't say.
What Stocktwits does is pull the traders out of that 87 million twitter users and put them in one place. @ that one place they give you tools to show your worth to potential customers if your selling or gives you someplace to see the worth of potential services if your buying. Or just information if your just a trader trying to trade.
As a brand you should want to meet your customers & potential customers where it's easiest to find them.
Mr. Sosnoff most definitely knows somethings I don't know, so I can't flat out say he's wrong. What I will say is I believe he's mistaken. 'tastytrade' is a good good network and Tom Sosnoff is a good good trader. Together they could dominate stocktwits, or @ least have a good shot @ dominating it. They should have @ least 10,000 followers on stocktwits I think. With the quality of the information they give that would be easy if they tried.
He said he likes them to come directly to tastytrade, I think the goal is just to get them there and getting them there cancels out whatever negatives there are in using Stocktwits or another site to do it. At any rate, Sosnoff is a beast and 'tastytrade' is tight work so none of this is a knock, just an observation.
If I'm missing something which is possible as hell, please feel free to leave a comment pointing it out.....