This is actually quite a funny story. Even hilarious. Slightly pathetic though. Well, I guess that some would see it as sad. It definitely made a few folks angry. Or furious. You know what? Why don’t I just tell it and you could be the judge for yourself…
It all begun with a Tweet. Twitter posted that it now opting in a new $mention, also known as the “Cashtag”, which would make ticker symbols clickable and will refer users to the stock’s Twitter search results when clicked on (only public companies eligible for a Cashtag).
For example when adding $FB Cashtag to a Tweet, it will automatically become a link (as I manually did here) referring to all the conversation surrounding Facebook. I would have embedded a few Tweets to the post for clearer illustration but it appears that Cashtags still aren’t working in embeddable Tweets.
However, I’m pretty sure that it just a matter of time before the Cashtag feature will arrive to embeddable Tweets as well soon enough. Anyways, it is a pretty useful option if you want to follow all the recent social discussions about a company, right?
But not all people were happy about this update…
If you don’t know StockTwits, it is a site which basically its whole function is to offer users the recent social discussions about stocks from Twitter. Oh, and it uses Cashtags… So you can probably imagine how the new recent Twitter’s Cashtags can destructively impact StockTwits.
It is pretty understandable then that the StockTwits’ guys would feel intimidated and threatened by Twitter’s introduction of their own Cashtag feature, which can essentially terminate their business. However, I wasn’t prepared for the reaction by StockTwits’ CEO and founder Howard Lindzon…
You can hijack a plane but it does not mean you know how to fly it.
Twitter is about advertising dollars. They have $1 billion of venture money on the line. Lot’s of pressures I am not interested in.
Wait, wait, wait! If I understand you correctly Mr. Lindzon, you claim that Twitter have “stolen” your Cashtag which your business use in… Twitter…? Are you mad at Twitter because your business which fully relies on Twitter now offers the same functionality as in Twitter…?
Is it that unrealistic for you that a company wants to capitalize its platform on its own and not leaving money of the table for others? And of course “Twitter is about advertising dollars”! After all, Twitter is a business that aspires to profit from its success!
If you really think that your shop offers much more value than Twitter’s feature as you claim (admittedly, it truly does) then people would continue to visit your site and prefer your services over Twitter’s!
Excuse me Mr. Lindzon, but whining that you have a competitor was a bitch-move and you’re kinda acting like a pussy.