
StockTwits founder “disappointed” that Twitter is “hijacking” his idea - TDL
http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/07/31/stocktwits-founder-disappointed-that-twitter-is-hijacking-his-idea-with-cashtags/
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kyro
If your entire business is based on searching another company's already
searchable set of data by using the apparently ingenious method of prepending
a "$" to search terms, and you've raised $8.6 million knowing full well that
at any time said company who owns this data could implement such a trivial
feature, then you're taking a stupidly ridiculous risk.

You can turn your feature/plugin into a company, but more than most startups,
you should be incredibly wary of the prospects of those you're piggy-backing
to duplicate your product. I had similar criticisms for Rapportive – Google
could've "hijacked" their idea at any time. They made it out nicely, but the
odds were really, really slim, and still are for anyone wanting to do the
same.

I'm not saying don't go for it; just don't be surprised if and when your idea
is copied.

~~~
nandemo
Nitpick: when you're raising $8.6M you're not taking a ridiculous risk, your
investors are. Arguably you then have less risk, e.g. you can reliably draw a
salary for several years even if your company isn't yet profitable.

~~~
mibbitier
Is this true? Will investors happily let founders draw comfortable salaries
for several years? That doesn't sound right to me...

~~~
ThePherocity
Yea, there are a lot of companies, pre sellout or pre IPO that will run for
year and years without a profitable business model. To name one off the top of
my head... Twitter.

~~~
pyre
I think this was the point he/she was trying to make:

    
    
      Will investors happily let founders draw comfortable 
      salaries
    

Do the founders really draw comfortable salaries during that run? If not then
their risk is that they are 'wasting' their time at below market rates.

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gadders
I think Joel said it best in 2009:

"Filling little gaps in another company’s product lineup is snatching nickels
from the path of an oncoming steam roller."

He also has a good Dave Winer quote:

Dave Winer (in 2007): "Sometimes developers choose a niche that’s either
directly in the path of the vendor, or even worse, on the roadmap of the
vendor. In those cases, they don’t really deserve our sympathy."

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html>

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andr
If your business can be killed by another company changing a regex, was it a
business in the first place?

~~~
kristofferR
Real enough to raise several millions multiple times, hire a medium sized team
(22 according to CrunchBase), and be featured in multiple prestigious
publications like TIME, Bloomberg TV and Fast Company at least.

And to be fair - this "cashtag" isn't the product StockTwits, it's just a
feature of it (albeit an important one).

~~~
dinkumthinkum
That doesn't mean it's a real business at all. It could be a sign of over
hype, over valuation, and just foolishness. I mean, the proof is in the
pudding here. I guess there was very little risk management done here. Joel
Spolsky wrote about not making this mistake awhile back, though I have "google
block" and can't seeM to find it (maybe it was on a podcast).

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jazzychad
Interestingly, I was the one who lobbied Twitter (more specifically Matt
Sanford of the search team) to make '$' a valid stop character for searching
on summize/twitter search. You've been able to search $TICKER for 2-3 years
now. The only thing Twitter has done now is linkified them like hashtags, and
they only link to a twitter search of that ticker... so nothing really
interesting yet.

I've also linked $TICKER from TweetGrid for as long, except my links go
straight to StockTwits: e.g.
[http://tweetgrid.com/grid?l=0&q1=%24AAPL](http://tweetgrid.com/grid?l=0&q1=%24AAPL)

~~~
lusr
My problem was Twitter's API not having a more intelligent filter API. If you
want to use it to filter all tweets with stocks (i.e. "\$\w{1,4}") you can't
as far as I could tell. Instead you have to filter on '$' which gets you a ton
of noise ("got me some $$$ for 2NITE! yeah!!!!").

~~~
dtsingletary
... Which you could them pull into a database and filter with your Regex after
the API. What does the noise cost you? It's a solvable problem. true, the
expanded results may keep you from getting relevant tweets due to rate
limiting.

~~~
yo-mf
But that is the point, you get rate limited. Of course you can take the data
set and clean it in your own database. The problem is how much relevant data
you can get before getting cut off.

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bherms
Once again I say "don't bet the farm on the generosity of someone else."
People frequently cry when these services pull support, "steal" ideas (I use
steal loosely), or block access...

Would you build your kids playhouse on your neighbors yard just because he
doesn't say no?

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samstave
Isn't this a case study in the question a VC would ask; "What would stop
[BigCo|CompetitorX|Facebook|Google] etc from doing [your service]...

~~~
drivebyacct2
Isn't this common sense? Or anyone who's had a freshmen intro to business
class? Barriers to entry?

~~~
samstave
Yes it is - I think this is the key factor in defining "is this a feature or a
business"

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inthewoods
Lots of critique on the post itself (most of which I agree with), but as
others have mentioned, Stocktwits has a real business - they sell compliance-
friendly social network tools to public companies - apparently about 150 of
them for $1500/month. That's about $2.7m in revenue if those numbers are
correct. They also have PRO accounts for $500/month - no idea the number of
accounts. Obviously the numbers could be bullshit, but I've seen a fair number
of Fortune 500 companies (Shell Oil, etc) using their service.

It's been a while since I looked at their site/tools, but I thought built
their own Twitter that runs alongside Twitter, although I'd be curious what
percentage of posts end up on Stocktwits network vs. Twitter. If that is still
the case, clearly they were concerned about being overly dependent on Twitter.

My point is just that the $ isn't the business - and honestly, I don't see why
this does anything but make their lives actually easier. That's my main
complaint - what does this change for Howard? Maybe it makes it easier for a
competitor to build something similar, but what was really stopping them in
any case? Couldn't a competitor have just adopted the same methodology?

No connection to the company - just thought the info might be useful.

~~~
jcuervo
Howard does sound like he is complaining, not sure why. I had heard him talk
at event where he did say they built their own platform independent of
Twitter.

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mmanfrin
Pedantry: he used 'i.e.' wrong. I.e. is used when _specifying_ , not giving an
example. He should have used 'e.g.'.

~~~
_delirium
That's not the worst thing about the post if we're going to be pedantic about
grammar. :) For example, he said "does mean" where he presumably intended to
say the opposite, "doesn't mean". Also, "Lot's of pressures" shouldn't have
the apostrophe.

------
DigitalSea
While I can sympathise to a certain extent, the ignorance of the StockTwits
founder makes it hard to completely sympathise for honestly thinking that a
company wouldn't take a money making idea using its platform and bake it in to
the service. It's the same problem people complain of in the Apple app store,
numerous times developers have cried foul over Apple stealing their idea for
themselves.

I definitely agree it's not ideal and will stifle innovation, but when you're
as big as Twitter or Apple you can afford to lose a few developers using your
platform without any recourse.

~~~
notimetorelax
I think the difference with Apple is that developers are not piggy bagging on
Apple's infrastructure, but provide new kinds of services that Apple hasn't
thought of. Then when these services prove to be popular Apple implements
similar feature and uses the notorious clause in their contract prohibiting
replication of native functionality. This approach is much more dirty.

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skadamat
He's just mad that Twitter didn't acquire his company

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bertomartin
Didn't he "borrow" the whole twitter idea and apply it to stocks specifically?

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HaloZero
Not sure why he's angry, didn't this same thing happen with Instapaper and
Apple? If anything, it will expose the idea to countless others and if they
really like it they might want to go beyond Twitter's implementation of it,
unless the feature is so weak / easy to do that you shouldn't be relying on
it.

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nivla
An entire business built on a "nifty" trick that is easily replicable and is
of value. Well, sooner or later it was going to copied.

Also, not sure how good the context of '$' is

>Go check out $HIT or $WAG (walgreen’s) on Twitter search or thousands

I first read that as Shit or Swag :|

~~~
benjaminfox
> I first read that as Shit or Swag :|

That highlights the point he's making :)

Searching StockTwits for '$WAG' results in relevant tweets about Walgreen Co.
[1], whereas searching Twitter for '$WAG' results in tweets containing '$wag'
in place of 'swag' [2].

[1] StockTwits '$WAG': <http://stocktwits.com/symbol/WAG?q=%24wag>

[2] Twitter '$WAG': <http://twitter.com/#!/search/%24wag/>

~~~
endianswap
Then what is he complaining about? It looks like his "product" has just as
much opportunity as it did before, just the $links are now a different color
by default, no?

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countessa
Lots of derision over how easy it was for StockTwits to build this and as such
they don't deserve sympathy? I don't get it. It sucks for them that Twitter is
implementing this feature, but I have to say that I have respect for
StockTwits - they noticed a gap in a market, produced a product and got on
with building their business. That's what we should all be doing. I think the
real/productive questions here are "what can StockTwits do to leverage their
current user base so that they continue to provide a valuable product and keep
building?" or "what is the best pivot they could do to keep building their
business?"

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stevewilhelm
Reuters and Bloomberg have been using stock (bond and currency) tickers as
links for decades in their trading systems.

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halis
This is just a case of a bad business person failing to protect themselves. If
the idea is that revolutionary and important to your business, then get
several patents on the idea and then be ready to defend those patents against
everyone.

This is why I'm not a fan of API's to begin with. It's just a proving ground
for the company hosting the API to troll the best ideas.

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AznHisoka
I have no sympathy. Why didn't he complain when other companies died when
Twitter/FB/Craigslist took away their business model?

It's not about Twitter killing the little guy, or stealing a feature from a
startup. It's about you making less money. Cry me a river.

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jcuervo
A write up comparing the two
[http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/07/stacking-t...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/07/stacking-
twitters-new-cashtags-vs-stocktwits/55228/)

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sturmeh
Neither of them support the ASX, shame.

