SkyGrid, the nifty, free financial news aggregator, is now publishing a stream of news on Twitter, letting users follow breaking business news headlines via the microblogging network.
The news aggregator, which only features stories about publicly traded companies, not only has an comprehensive Twitter feed for news stories, but the site also has Twitter feeds that are broken down by sector. So users can follow SkyGridHealth or SkyGridEnergy for sector-related news. SkyGrid currently has separate Twitter feeds for 8 different industries. SkyGrid says that the Twitter feed may be especially useful to users who want to access SkyGrid on their mobile devices.
Similar to TechMeme and Google News, SkyGrid clusters related news stories based on keyword analysis, what they’re linking to, etc. SkyGrid also tries to determine the sentiment of each article – red for negative, green for positive.
As we wrote in our earlier review of the services, SkyGrid is an incredibly useful tool, especially now that it is free. But the one element that is missing from SkyGrid is coverage of larger private companies, like Facebook. In order to become a serious competitor to popular aggregators like Techmeme (which also has a Twitter firehose), the site will need to expand its range of coverage. But especially for people in the financial services industries who use Twitter as a news source, SkyGrid is on the right track to providing users with real-time valuable financial news.
Good use for my iPod Touch. Thx.
In other (twitter) news: Stephen Colbert bashes twitter for fake reports of Jeff Goldblum’s death
http://www.colb...-will-be-missed
NONONO. It’s sourcing the crowd and citizen journalism. Colbert can’t POSSIBLY be spot on AGAIN.
I find it odd that what seems like any old twitter integration is covered on this blog. Not sure why this is a big deal from reading the article.
The one thing that does jump out at me is that “wow! the every day man can finally use RSS”.
Twitter is pretty much the modern day RSS feed reader
http://www.traderbots.com
If their service is so great, why doesn’t their “In the News” page list this article, or this (http://www.tech...oose-on-skygrid) other TC article? Epic fail.
WOW, it probably took them all of 5 minutes to write a script using the Twitter API to get their news onto Twitter…
Congrats on getting on TC, BTW their are thousands of businesses doing this already and have been doing so for years now
good point, *most* streams like this are automated (and aren’t “engaging” Twitter streams)
This is excellent news! Now I can check the latest financial news in any sector that I want, all while I eat rice out of my shoe with a comb.
LOL skygrid and every other breaking financial news service is irrelevant, gotta love industry BS!
So tech crunch plans on writting about every company that uses twitter to promote what the company does/offers???
Yes twitter is used by masses, yes twitter is a big deal to many, but does that mean you have to report on every company that starts using twitter?
Question: If SkyGrid can predict public markets, why don’t they change their business model and invest their VC funding to make billions and billions of dollars?
Wow! Some website RSS feed is redirected to a twitter account?! That’s huge news! Thanks TC!
For all you startups out there, to get on TechCrunch you have to do one thing and only thing only:
Integrate with Twitter.
You could spend 5 minutes making a micheal jackson tweet thing to billie jean and you’ll get written up. Spend 5 months or a year working on a solid product and TC will ignore you unless you spend the extra 10 minutes to integrate with Twitter.
great biz news app for iPhone. thx leena.
Kind of lame that you can’t sign up. Really defeats the purpose of being “free.”
This is great guys. So exciting to see…go Skygrid!!
Of course, a dozen people beat me to it, but..
How is someone piping an RSS feed to Twitter remotely considered NEWS!
“Google employees to use EMAIL to aid in corporate communication.”
“TechCrunch announces plans to use blogging software to publish content.”
“Prehistoric man eats wild animals and edible plants.”
I’m sorry, but is SkyGrid paying you to promote their company? Are you good friends with the owner of the company?
1.) When you originally reviewed the company, there was no way to sign up for the service, even though your review claimed there was. It took over two days after your article before SkyGrid offered a Web page allowing people to “request” to sign up. Not a sign-up, mind you, just a request for an account. (BTW, on the day the request form went live, I requested an account and never heard a peep from them.)
2.) As of today, you still have to request to sign up, so what good is it? Why doesn’t the service simply have a sign-up page and create the user account right then and there? Are they cherry-picking their beta users? Why doesn’t the writer make this clear in the article?
3.) So they have a Twitter feed. So does every other major financial news site. If you want cutting-edge headlines about SkyGrid, how about this: they use Flash on their site. Or if you want a really big tech scoop, try this one out: they’ve got a backend database. News we can all use.
4.) What’s the likelihood that they’ll be around six months from now? Twelve months? Sure, it’s free (well, not really, because you can’t sign up), but do they have the financial resources and operational savvy to be worth my time and trouble? Are they just big talk and no walk? If so, why change our financial news consumption habits?
So far as I can tell, SkyGrid is just vapor right now, which makes “nifty” and “useful” a bit of an exaggeration.
Please, you folks at TechCrunch do so many great things. Please stop with the ads for your buddies at SkyGrid.
How can anyone disagree with Richard’s comments? What’s going on here? SkyGrid appears to be vapor ware. They have been in business since 2006 and still no accessible site. Seems fishy to be writing about something as inane as twitter feeds.
The one thing that does jump out at me is that “wow! the every day man can finally use RSS”.
So far as I can tell, SkyGrid is just vapor right now, which makes “nifty” and “useful” a bit of an exaggeration.