Twitter have added a hashtag-esque function to allow users to see the stock market price of a company. All you do is add a dollar sign to the front of a company trading name, e.g. $GE.
Nifty, but third party apps won’t have this for a little bit I imagine. Moreover, Twitter’s third-world offering of first party apps will probably get this feature a long time from now (consider the Mac app still hasn’t updated the icon with the bird tilted back a bit).
It’s interesting to see Twitter add features like this. It sticks to their ecosystem nicely, but importantly gives people less reason to leave the service to find information – which is a huge thing that social media sites have been trying to do. Facebook is doing everything it can (articles, etc.) to make sure you stay on Facebook.com.
This is starting to emulate the games console manufacturers a few years ago, who designed the Xbox 360 and PS3 (Microsoft & Sony respectively) to be your all-in entertainment systems and failed. They wanted you to play games, rent movies and stream music with your console to your TV. What they forgot is that no one wants to do that, and they want the service to be specifically brilliant at the one thing that they’re brilliant at – playing games.
This is something both Twitter & Facebook need to keep in mind in the race to stop users from leaving their domain range. Too much diversification of services and people get confused as to why they’re using your service in the first place. A thing I’ve heard a lot about Facebook these days…
