Financial Market Data Web Services – Xignite Blog

Our Customer Spotlight series showcases the interesting ways our clients are using Xignite’s Cloud API’s to power their applications.

StockTwits is the leading social network targeted at the investment community reaching several hundred thousand users on StockTwits.com, and tens of millions through the StockTwits Distribution Network. Since its launch, StockTwits has garnered much praise, including being named by Fast Company as one of the 10 most innovative Web companies, and by Time Magazine, as one of the 50 best websites.

Xignite recently spoke with Francis Costello, Chief Operating Officer, and Chris Corriveau, Chief Technology Officer of StockTwits, to learn more about this fast-growing company.

Q: Describe the StockTwits community?

Francis Costello – StockTwits was founded in 2008 by Howard Lindzon, our CEO. At that time Howard saw the opportunity to create an investing community based around social media. The community allows investors to share their investing ideas in 140-character tweets, all in real-time. The value of StockTwits is very much based on the wisdom of the crowds concept, with 1000’s of our users all contributing to create a unique financial communications platform. StockTwits is fundamentally based on this social construct, and is very different from the more established financial media outlets such as CNBC, which involve traditional one-way broadcast communication.

Q: Why has StockTwits been so successful?

Francis Costello – I think there are two main reasons for StockTwits’ success to date. First, StockTwits created and popularized the “$(Ticker)” tag which Read more

Our Customer Spotlight series showcases the interesting ways our clients are using Xignite’s Cloud API’s to power their applications.

Xignite would like to introduce you to Personal Capital, which was just launched in September, but already has made quite an impact in the wealth management industry winning  “Best in Show” at Finovate Fall 2011, and being described by Bloomberg Businessweek as “Wealth Management for the Internet Age”.

Personal Capital’s goal is to offer a simple wealth management solution for the complex lives of their affluent clients.  The firm was founded by some of the leading financial technology and e-finance executives, and is backed by a well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

We recently sat down with Bill Harris, Chief Executive Officer of Personal Capital, who was formerly CEO of PayPal and Intuit, and Jay Shah, Chief Information Officer of Personal Capital, who was formerly CIO of E-Loan.

Q: Why was Personal Capital created?

Bill Harris – We really created Personal Capital to fill a gap that most of us feel in our everyday lives, that is how to manage our financial lives, when everything is so fragmented.  Many of us have brokerage accounts, IRAs, 401ks, checking accounts, credit cards, mortgages, all strewn across multiple institutions, but there is no one place to go to make sense of it all. No one place where we can make a rational decision about our finances and plan for the future. Personal Capital was formed to allow people to make sense of their complex lives, in a comprehensive way, so that they can then take action.

Q: How does Personal Capital work?

Bill Harris – It really only takes 15 minutes to understand the power of Personal Capital.  The first 5 minutes you spend linking all of your accounts to the Personal Capital website. This allows Personal Capital to assemble a baseline of your financial situation on at least a daily basis.  The next 5 minutes minutes Personal Capital presents you with an easy to understand analytic framework that gives you a graphical representation of your entire financial situation. Finally, in the last 5 minutes we recommend the ideal asset allocation based on your financial profile and other factors. All of this is for free. At this point you can then decide whether you want to work with one of Personal Capital’s advisors so that we can help you manage and implement your financial plan.

Q: How is Personal Capital different from a more traditional wealth manager or investment advisor?

Bill Harris – There are a few significant differences but perhaps the biggest is the mode of interaction. With a more traditional approach much more face to face interaction is required, otherwise you don’t get very much visibility into your finances. At most you probably get sent a statement every quarter or so but that’s it. Just establishing your relationship with a traditional wealth manager can be a pain. It typically involves three trips to your advisor: (1) You drive to the advisor’s office to decide whether you want to do business with them. (2) You then get back in your car to go home to gather all of your financial documents into a shoebox and then deliver it back to the advisor. (3) Finally you return to the advisor when they have made sense of your financial situation and are ready to make recommendations. Obviously, this mode of interaction just doesn’t work for busy people. Personal Capital is different, we offer multiple ways to interact with us in real-time. We let our clients decide what works for them.

Q: Why has the wealth management industry evolved so slowly?

Jay Shah – There is no doubt that it has been slow. We have seen some innovation in the tools used by the wealth manager, but these are designed for the advisor and do not really impact the client directly. We’ve also seen progress on the self-directed side with online brokerage accounts but essentially the experience of the traditional wealth manager client has not changed much over the years.

Bill Harris – I think it has definitely has been slow. When I look at the last almost 100 years the two biggest innovations Read more