Twitter activates $ ‘cashtag’ for stock symbols
You can now use the $ on Twitter to turn stock symbols into clickable links.
The new feature came Monday afternoon when the company announced it in a tweet.
Now you can click on ticker symbols like $GE on twitter.com to see search results about stocks and companies— Twitter (@twitter) July 31, 2012
The use of $ before stock symbols was already common, especially among those working in Wall Street-related fields, but by giving the symbol clickability, Twitter is making the practice more worthwhile.
From my use of the “cashtag,” it seems the $ will only produce a link if it’s used with an existing stock symbol. So the $ won’t create a cashtag if you’re just talking about specific amounts of money.
The cashtag follows in the steps of the @ and # signs on Twitter, which have been adopted on other social media platforms. On both Google+, Facebook and other sites, you can use the @ sign to link another user, and on Google+ you can use the # to form a hashtag.
The Verge speculates that Twitter could eventually use cashtags to show users stock information as part of its effort to bring more content and features to Twitter through its expanded tweets.
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