Last month, Lance Walley left his position as co-founder and CEO of Ruby on Rails hosting company Engine Yard, after the VC-funded startup was forced to trim its workforce by 15% last January.
With nothing else on his hands immediately, Walley started building a Twitter application on his own dime (about $10,000) that would basically link your Twitter account to a brokerage account and enable you to trade stocks via the micro-sharing service.
PollyTrade is the result of his work, and it’s currently available in public beta. What it does is link your Twitter account to your E*Trade account (more brokers will be added in the future based on user feedback), and subsequently enable you to do transactions using tweets that start with @pollytrade and include the respective ticker.
For instance, if you’d want to buy 200 shares of Apple, you would tweet ‘@pollytrade buy 200 shares AAPL’ and likewise for selling e.g. 100 shares of General Electric (’@pollytrade sell 200 shares GE). After communicating with E*Trade, which should only take a few seconds, PollyTrade tweets back your order status along with your brokerage order number. In case something went wrong – because of incorrect formatting or a refusal from your broker – you’ll receive an error message instead so you know the order didn’t go through.
It’s that simple, and the ease of use is what Walley touts as the main selling point: “I always have access to Twitter, even if through SMS, so trading is always just a short text message away.”
That’s true, but there are issues: the service’s flaky reliability is one, security is another. Anyone remember the Mikeyy worm attacks earlier this year? To get around that, you’ll still need to log into your E*Trade account to confirm any transactions passed through PollyTrade, so the app is more like an easy way to start transactions than to actually go from A to Z with buying and selling stock.
On a sidenote: if you have a public Twitter account, other users can see which stocks you’re buying and selling when they follow both you and @PollyTrade, or when they simply go to your profile. Obviously, don’t use PollyTrade if that’s information you want to keep to yourself until they start supporting trading via direct messages (which is in the works).
If you’re all ok with the above and you want to sign up, you can do this here, but note that while in beta the PollyTrade team will decide to let you in only after contacting you.
Curious to see if this takes off, when they’ll team up with the StockTwits folks, and what you think of PollyTrade.
Its definitely a good concept but the security and the privacy aspect of it concerns me a bit. It could prove to be a real valuable service once all the necessary security features are in place.
Seems like a cool idea, let’s hope they do well!
I think in the near future, we all would be able to get bypass surgeries done through twitter
I do not think this idea will survive .People are just becoming crazy and building anything with twitter .
http://tekunik.blogspot.com
i don’t get it, if it’s done to enable mobile trading, why not use xmpp/jabber? it has text interface, web client and so on.
why the hell put it though twitter? what are actual advantages of that, apart from riding on the back of hyped topic?
This sounds like an application probably requires a hundered lines of code. Where was the 10 grand actually spent?
jolt?
on a $100 / line developer.
this is prolly the worst idea i’ve seen on tc
Correction: “This is _polly_ the worst idea I’ve seen on TC”
What a brilliantly stupid idea. From an entrepreneurial perspective, what customer problem does this solve? Nothing. It just creates a clunky text based interface on top of eTrade which has a decent GUI and opens unbelievable security holes. Why not trade stocks via command line? Ugh.
or Facebook status
Etrade already has a simple secure mobile app for entering trades https://wireles...ade.com/etrade/
Im sure other brokers do, or will soon. I see zero value-added in pollytrade.
Only a Madoff run securitites firm would even want “hear” about this application. Does this guy even know what goes into building an order entry system for a brokerage firm ? Yes – it would be appropriate to tag this one “twittering fool”.
Yeah, I have to agree with @pg this is quite possibly the worst idea I’ve ever seen as well.
Bully for the idea generation, but what happens when someone wants a stock to go down and they hack into Twitter, a third party app, your app or another of the many, many holes that Twitter authentication appears to have? They now have access to do so in a very powerful way:
1. If the accounts are linked, a hacker with interest in a stock’s direction can drive down (or up) stock in several people’s accounts, maybe enough to start some trend.
2. Even if the hacker does not manage to get actual trades made via the hack, the idea that millions of people will start seeing all those hacked users start “phantom trading” @pollytrade sell 200 shares GE means that a panic could start anyway.
3. This hack does not even have to happen on your system, a hacker could get into any Twitter product’s database and steal a ton of usernames/passwords and tweet from them even if they are not members of your system. (This would have the same implications of #2)
4. There are trading systems appearing that are basing their intelligence on Tweets. Enough phantom trading activity could set these off as well. If the funds following those patterns are big enough to make a hit to the stock, you could see sizable activity in trades before the market realizes there is a hack.
I don’t see any way that this is not a hackable product with a lot of monetary reasons to hack.
Listen,
There are no material implications to any of these bullshit twitter finance applications. Twitter is a fine way to waste some time, not by any means a vehicle for someone to create some sort of “trend” or three pronged “panic”. If this guy wants to spend his money on something that is valueless at best, and a personal security threat at worst, let him have at it. But let’s not overstate the importance of tweets to the system. This is a fad.
Hmm, let’s see how this thing works once all features are already in place.
This is absolutely, wth out question, the dumbest idea to date! THis one is even worse than the startup that claimed to be able to predict the fate of other startups.
By the way, what ever became of the startup predictor of startups? Deadpool?
As an active stock twits trader I would much rather have an application that will tweet the exact time I buy or sell from my trading account for true transparency so that my fellow traders no the latest wacky trade I have made and when I exit. Sorry but tweeting a trade to purchase or sell from twitter is a bit too on the edge for me security wise. It may be good if we could no that it was secure with SSL encryption etc. This developer is someone I want to keep an eye. GREAT WORK I am sure that some retail traders may use it but not me.
huh? How does someone actually raise 55m for such a strange, non-real-time idea like this? Any real trader wants real time action, not some delayed twitter trade.
Oh damn man…the 55m was for twitter. On paper, Twitter doesn’t sound any better than this either
Why does anyone need a middle man? Plus telling everyone who follows you about your financial life isn’t Internet savvy.
Why does everything need to go via the #$%# twitter? What’s wrong with using etrade instead of some convoluted error-prone, security-flawed, privacy-absent tweeets? There is zero need for it.
Trading stocks via twitter is a nuts idea to begin with. How do you convince people to even consider using it? How about bank money transfers via tweeter, or filing your taxes, or maybe lets apply to credit cards via tweeter. Geez…
I think I understand why he was part of the 15% trimmed.
lol. Exactly the first thought that popped into my head.
Huh? He wasn’t.
Oh. The way the first paragraph was constructed, it made it sound as if his role as CEO was part of the cuts. My mistake.
Who in here is willing to bet that within the next six months, start ups will start offering everything from pizza delivery to hiring hookers through Twitter.
Damn twitter…you’re so fine.
a horrible idea – what problem is it solving?
Haha spot on Puranjay, I’m sorry this is the most ridiculous non-innovation of the Twitter era, we already have lots of ways to trade stocks online, I don’t see some douchey day trader thinking “OMG I NEED to buy 200 shares of Apple right now, oh great I’m on twitter I’ll just use PollyWhatever”. Wait I know what this is, this is for iPhone users who can’t open up multiple browser windows, well there’s an easy fix for that: get a Palm Pre.
This beta version represents a minimal but functional feature set to support basic trading. If the market likes PollyTrade, then we’ll put more into it, like private trading.
Thanks to the folks who have signed up for the beta this Sunday morning, and to those who’ve written in about partnership opportunities!
Dumb, dumb, dumb. C’mon people.
This makes no sense to me.
All traders care about it is speed of execution, software stability, and commissions. Not sure this solution offers any of these.
exactly! arrington should add this to deadpool!
There is something wrong when everyone is trying to use one tool (twitter) to solve all problems. What’s the point of this other than to say, we can now trade stocks on twitter?
Personally, I would never add the insecurities and instabilities of twitter to my retirement funds.
Funny – I spent a couple of days prototyping an app like this in March, after TC posted an article about KaChing. I signed up for their (KaChing) API access and managed to get this working very easily. I abandoned my little test project for a few reasons, but I don’t inherently think the idea is “dumb.”
If you follow socializedbiz on twitter then you’ll see one of my test entries from march:
Goog buy 100 market7:19 PM Mar 13th from txt
You’ll also see that I don’t tweet much!
-M
PollyTrade fits a certain niche.
I have different accounts for retirement, mid-term, and short-term/speculation. I will start with the short-term and see how it goes. I suspect most beta users will do the same. In fact, we require that they limit their exposure during the beta period, so we can be sure everything works smoothly.
We’ve received a number of beta user requests, partner requests, feature requests, and a few inquiries from potential investors in PollyTrade, so the interest is definitely there.
We’ll listen to users and other interested parties and make the service that they want.
Another thing we forget – we all know how reliable twitter is. Personally, I wouldn’t trust anything of real importance to be handled via Twitter.
I’m working on a trading bot that posts its trade entries and exits to a twitter account. If people want to follow or even copy the trades they can subscribe to the twitter account. Meanwhile I look forward to taking advantage of any sorry saps that want to trade stocks via their twitter account.
Deadpool within a month.
deadpool within 2 weeks
What a RETARDED idea. What happens when someone hacks you Twitter??? This has been done a dozen times already so what will happen the next time they do this? You’ll go bankrupt.
Put it in deadpool.
What a great way to manipulate the market. Because tweets are public and anyone can send a message to pollytrade I can just go
@pollytrade sell 5000 shares BRK
and watch as people go nuts trying to reason why someone is dumping $43 million worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock. Have you seen the pump and dump that goes on on the Yahoo Finance boards? Do you really want it to come to twitter?
what a waste of $10,000
How do you set your bid/ask or are you tied to the market price?
you are tied to market price – that’s why this is a stupid idea! log into your freaking broker account and do the trade right!
Great! Let’s do all the kinds of stuff via Twitter! With a hole bunch of such apps, Twitter risks to consume the Internet (no that it’s really possible).
However, when the number of actively used apps will go above a certain level, people will have to learn “Twitter syntax” for at least for a few hours before they can start understanding what’s going on…
Did they still their logo from Twitbacks? Sure looks like it.
Does beg the question as to why command line interfaces didn’t ever develop in instant messaging.
WHY TWITTER FOR STOCK TRADING?
While many are arguing that trading stocks using Twitter is not a great idea, the bigger concept is that many are spending more and more time on Twitter. As a result, Twitter is becoming more popular than the browser! For example, I spend more time on Twitter than I do on the browser (I use Tweetdeck). Hence, I can see why people want to do more things, such as trade stocks, on Twitter. Last week I spent more time following the US Open on Twitter than I did on http://www.usopen.com or http://www.pgatour.com. The atomic unit of consumption is now a stream and that is why Twitter is becoming so popular since I can see many streams.
Can we ask Warren Buffett to start using the service immediately?
That´s cool!
Article about a user that accidentally placed a huge buy order via Twitter by mistake in 3….2….1….