Last Thursday, Bloomberg announced that it has begun integrating Twitter functionality into its service platform. It filters company and market-centric tweets for its base of over 300,000 subscribers. This came shortly after the SEC provided guidance that would allow for companies to distribute their announcements and press releases through social media websites.

Bloomberg's service is heavily filtered and entirely focused on providing high quality, potentially market moving news to its users. Traditionally, banks and trading houses have restricted use of Twitter at the office for compliance reasons, so this service offers traders and Analysts a means of keeping up with twittersphere without resorting to their phones and without worrying the firm's legal staff.

I think that this goes a long way to confirm what we already know, that Twitter and other social media can move markets. I was curious to get an insider's view of just how important social media is in the trading world, so I reached out to a trader friend of mine for his view. Read on to hear what he had to say...

The world today is chock-full of information, far more than any one person could possibly digest or hope to read. For this weeks blog post I decided to give a list of the news sources I use and find helpful, as well as inviting others to share their ideas. So, here goes.

Would love to get your feedback on our daily posts to see how we can improve. Respond on this thread or send me a pm, thanks!

-Andy

In 2013 social media is apart of everything we do from checking–in at our favorite pizza place to tweeting about the latest sports news. But how does WS trading fit-in or does it? To me, it seems each successive major technological transition has led trading further and further away from the street and the latest one comes from Paul Hawtin, CEO of DCM Capital who’s launching his platform tomorrow called, DCM Dealer that utilizes a social media algorithm for sentiment-based investment analysis. Read on to find out about how it works and what it means for WS trading…

I'm going to join in all the other countless people who are making their "predictions" for 2013 and would welcome yours as well! Here we go:

• Moodys will downgrade the US in the first half of 2013 - Political deadlock and rapidly increasing debt-to-GDP along with a trillion-dollar deficit will cause Moodys to follow S&P and downgrade the US
• We will be pushed the brink of warfare between Israel and Iran around the summer - Although we will be close to war, I don't believe that Israel will have the backing of the US and will not actually do anything openly, but will continue with it's "covert" war and assassinations

Twitter is going public in 2013. There, I said it.

And it looks like 2013 is going to be a big year for Initial Public Offerings. Maybe it's just the naive kid in me, but something about IPOs really gets me fired up. I still think it's the only real purpose of the stock market. And there's some big names on tap this year, according to VentureBeat and CB Insights.

CB Insights, which has a pretty impressive track record of predicting who is going public and when, says that there are 472 companies positioned to IPO this year - all currently valued at $100 million or more. VentureBeat then isolated the 17 companies it thought most like to bow over the next 12 months.

Leading off was Box, an enterprise cloud provider founded by 26-year old Aaron Levie. The company is currently valued at $1.2 billion and is shooting for an IPO valuation of between $2-3 billion. Not too shabby for a kid under 30.

I'm going to be covering the IPO market today and tomorrow. Today we're taking a look back at 2012 and some of the best and worst performers in the IPO market (hint: Facebook was neither). Tomorrow we'll cover what we can expect in 2013 (hint: here come Twitter). 2012 had the fewest IPOs in three years, but the largest dollar volume since 2007. And you've probably never even heard of the top performers, but each of them would've doubled your money and then some:

Twitter is a basic social media tool that I think is the most under-utilized technology that is available for free to the public. I am still very surprised that the vast majority of people do not use Twitter as one of their primary news sources. I want to go over some of the ways that Twitter helps me in my daily life as an MBA student and hopefully will persuade you to start using Twitter.

The best part about Twitter is that it is completely customizable to the individual. While your fifteen year old sister might use Twitter to follow her favorite clothing line and see what Kim Kardashian’s opinion of cheesecake is, there are many people and groups that are out there that can benefit someone in the finance industry, anyone from a generalist who is learning about the industry to someone who concentrates on a very niche sector.

Though using Twitter to aid in stock picking is by no means a new method, institutional investors have yet to become major backers of the strategy. Well, Derwent Capital's new hedge fund does just that. The brand new Twitter tracker returned 1.85% in its first month of operation, beating average hedge fund returns of 0.76% and the S&P which fell 2.2% in the same period.

I am always late to the party. Sometimes it is because of my incessant tardiness. Sometimes it is because I don’t catch on to things mainstream years in the making. Sometimes it is because I am pretty damn cool.

In this case I am betting on all three. As a result of the recent $400 million infused, Twitter now sits at an $8 billion valuation. I couldn’t care more or less, either way. All I can say is that I am riding this gravy train. I am even willing to divulge that I am having a plate of lima beans and spare ribs while I write this.

The legion of Sino-Forest defenders who came out after the damning report from Muddy Waters now appears to be in full retreat. It looks like Muddy Waters got it right, and some high-profile folks got caught unaware. John Paulson decided to cut his losses on Friday and sold completely out of the position - dealing his investors a loss of as much as $720 million.

As bad as that is, things took a turn for the surreal yesterday before the open. At 9:25 a.m. yesterday, five minutes before the open, ZeroHedge tweeted that the SEC had charged Muddy Waters and Carson Block with stock manipulation. That didn't smell right for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the SEC has no jurisdiction over Muddy Waters (a firm based in Hong Kong) or Sino-Forest (a stock traded on the Toronto exchange). I sent this reply to ZeroHedge three minutes later.

Greetings fight fans. From the hallowed halls of the coming Social Media Boom we have the main event. The one for all the marbles. The one that will compensate for all the lackluster pay-per-view events and third tier fights we have witnessed in recent memory.

The two giants of the online world have been on an inevitable collision course. Not since Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania III have I so looked forward to a staged battle between two products of hype, advertising and massive profits.

And So it Begins...

Ahhh, Facebook. Perhaps the biggest thing ever made since sliced bread. I’m on it, you’re on it, we’re all on it.

With over half a billion active users worldwide, it’s become more popular than porn and has a lifted an awkward, freckled, little nerd (obvious envy seeping) to the Forbes list, with a net worth of $ 6.9 billion last year.

Not to mention TIME’s Man of the year.

With Goldman’s private offering valuing Facebook at $50 billion, they pretty much doubled his net worth and assures a future IPO.

But is Facebook really worth $50 billion to you?