Until this week, many Wall Street bankers and traders had no access to Twitter. Despite the fact that Twitter is now where lots of breaking news (including today’s jobs day numbers) happens first, most big banks shut off access to social networks on their systems for compliance and security reasons.
But that’s all changing. Yesterday, Bloomberg LP announced that its terminal, the subscription data service (price: more than $20,000 a year) that is used by more than 300,000 Wall Streeters to look up all kinds of financial information, will include a Twitter feature.
The TWTR terminal feature doesn’t allow users to tweet, but it does let them read the tweets of certain news services, financial writers, economists, and bloggers selected by Bloomberg’s terminal team. Being on Bloomberg’s VIP list isn’t just a meaningless status symbol. (Although it is that, too.) It’s tantamount to being able to broadcast your thoughts into every firm on Wall Street, and each person on the list gets more than 300,000 silent followers, who may or may not be trading millions of dollars based on their 140-character musings.
Here’s what Bloomberg’s TWTR function looks like. A user can set his “News Flow” to Light, Medium, or Heavy, and filter tweets by company, industry, or market. There is something called “Bloomberg Social Velocity” on the bottom of the screen, and users can press 8<GO> to search for a specific person’s handle.
A Bloomberg spokeswoman wouldn’t give us the full list of Twitter accounts approved for terminal display, but confirmed that there are “several thousand” accounts followed, with more being added constantly. With the help of a terminal user, we’ve patched together a very partial list of the accounts that are displayed on the terminal.
Since Bloomberg’s terminal also captures tweets with selected keywords and stock symbols, it’s possible that not all of these accounts are included on the approved-user list. But many are. The list includes mainstream and financial news services, well-known reporters and columnists, economists and traders, a handful of financial industry watchdogs (like Senator Elizabeth Warren), and a few celebrity oddballs (Donald Trump). There are also some notable absences — like, ahem, @NYMag — but overall, it’s pretty much the list you’d expect.
News outlets/blogs
Writers/bloggers/etc.
Professional traders/analysts/economists/commentators and corporations
Random politicians/celebrities/etc.
@AGSchneiderman (New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman)
There are thousands more names on Bloomberg’s VIP list, but you have to have a terminal to search for individual users. If any terminal users want to help us expand this list, drop us a line.
