Behold….The Ipad…The End of Hunger and Poverty… and a Nasdaq/Stocktwits App

Posted by Howard
on April 2nd, 2010

Julia Sears from The Nasdaq called me about a month ago from Hong Kong and asked if we could help them add some features and functionality to their iPad application.

I of course lied and spoke for the team and said sure. ALL entrepreneurs need to recognize when you have a motivated and mobilized larger partner and they ask for help, it is nirvana. When there is a time deadline…OMG! Internally, we had been debating for months the merits of a mobile strategy and we had decided to go for it. We hired Sheehan whose full name I won’t disclose for fear of poaching. The Sunday before his first day I called him and said:

‘Dude, you get to go to New York. Can’t tell you why. Chris (our CTO) will see you there. Call Karene. How cool is your job. We will pay you back…keep your receipts. Bye.’

At a start-up there is only so much money and time. Roadmaps are critical. Burn rates are critical. Still, I believe roadmaps are made to be broken and ‘Campfire’ (chat) is around so people can make fun of me internally. In fact, the most used term internally associated with my name is UGH!

Flash forward 30 plus days and we are proud to to be a part of the wicked cool Nasdaq iPad app. Julia says it better than I could:

“The iPad is the one of the most exciting pieces of technology that I have worked with. From the day that the concept of building a Nasdaq OMX application was introduced to me, I knew that we were embarking on something revolutionary and with endless possibilities. Typically when designing a product we use mock-ups and screenshots—but in designing for the iPad we found ourselves making intricate storyboards in order to model how the user would ‘explore’ various parts of financial markets. The iPad is also a social product—one that allows multiple users to view the same screen at once, or flip over the device to display to another person. In light of this sharing theme we found the Stocktwits integration to feel natural on the iPad, and in conjunction with rich multimedia content we built a truly great product.”

I have been pretty vocal that the iPad will revolutionalize the financial web so it feels great that Stocktwits can be part of the initial launch and partnered with a global data and technology company. I am really proud that we got the call, we mobilized and we launched. Chris did a wicked job as usual and now I wish I had ordered one of the damn things. Shaheen is fighting to get his bills paid.

Some of the highlights:

•              The ability to build virtual stock portfolios;
•              Create watch lists to monitor favorite stocks;
•              Draw on-the-fly performance charts and overlay them with curves for technical indicators;
•              See stock prices change in real time within a Market Mind and Real-Time Ticker;
•              View high-quality video clips from StockTwits TV and from the NASDAQ Market Intelligence Desk; and
•              Post tweets on StockTwits’ real-time stream. Share charts, recommendations, symbols, and websites.

Here are some screenshots, so go line up at Best Buy and buy one on Saturday you haters.

Users can view a wide variety of high quality StockTwitsTV video in the app on the iPad.

Create an account, login, post market related tweets, and shorten URLs for tweets using stk.ly

Easily navigate the site and view a broad selections of filtered StockTwits streams including stock symbol streams that correspond with the stock you are looking at in the Qfolio app, member profiles, individual stock streams, the suggested stream, equities stream, charts stream, options stream, forex stream.

Create watch lists to monitor favorite stocks

: Draw on-the-fly performance charts and overlay them with curves for technical indicators

: See stock prices change in real time within a Market Mind and Real-Time Ticker

The ability to build virtual stock portfolios

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.