Bloomberg’s VIP Terminal Tweeters | Hacker News Reader

Bloomberg’s VIP Terminal Tweeters

nymag.com

20 pointsvalgaze16 comments

(Bloomberg employee) It might seem like a crazy interface if you haven't used a Terminal before, but the thing which the articles/screenshots don't really convey is that it feeds into the existing news backend. We consume 80,000+ news feeds so the Twitter content feeds in just like any other news source. Lots of handles have been imported and classified different ways and the same entity / topic classification that occurs for articles will also occur on tweet content without making a Twitter specific backend or frontend app.

Do people/institutions pay to be on the list?

No, it's just a matter of the data team understanding their relevance to customers and getting to categorizing them. I think they've done enough to go live but it's an ongoing process for sure.

That interface makes my eyes bleed, is that what is considered "cutting edge" in the stock trading industry?

It isn't a consumer product - prettiness has nothing to do with usability. This is an extreme power user environment where discoverability and aesthetics take a back seat to consistency and reliability.

Think of it less like a computer program and more like the cockpit of an airplane. It needs to be powerful, it can require training before use, it needs to be consistent, it needs to be fault-tolerant and mistake-tolerant, and it doesn't need to look good.

I get that, I would have just thought even with a product optimized for the traits you mention would be a little more advance. That said I realize I am making a snap judgement here from a single screenshot of the software which is probably not entirely fair of me. I was simply under the impression that the tools traders used were a little more advanced looking I guess.

Do not let the user interface fool you. Bloomberg is about as "advanced" a trading information system as you can get. Its main competitor, Reuters, is also no better looking and often used simultaneously. Together they sew up most of the trading information market, 60%+.

A trader will also have a third application/screen for trade input into their firms systems.

Bloomberg terminal was designed for non-computer users back in the 80s and the whole physical layout, especially the Bloomberg keyboard, is a part of the design. The emphasis is on speed of access by keyboard, consistency, information liveliness and responsiveness.

It also means, that Bloomberg can iterate to add functionality to the core of the application (which is not the UI itself), a hell of a lot faster than new competitors.

Thank you for this, I really enjoy learning about the inner working of other industries. Thank you for correcting my ignorance.

I don't think that this feature is going to be used that often, for two main reason:

(i) when a Bloomberg user uses the terminal to lookup securities and other economic/financial information, they don't want to be open about it (trading strategies, investment focus, etc, are well guarded secrets and become real competitive advantages),

(ii) most of the firms that use Bloomberg Terminals have Twitter and other "social" networks blocked by firewalls.

Correction: given that it is a read only, "curated" list of users, I do believe it will be used. I was skeptic about the ability of being able to tweet, but it's been made clear that tweeting won't be permitted.

I disagree with you and I suspect it will be used by more than a few traders as an indicator of sentiment - they'll use it a way to quickly gauge what people are thinking about particular companies and use that as another variable for their trading/sales decisions.

Your two reasons don't make a lot of sense to me, based on my experience in the industry. Specifically -

(i) If you're using a Bloomberg terminal, it's somewhat implicit that Bloomberg knows what you're using it to look at (as well as who you're emailing via it etc). If people didn't trust them not to tell everyone else what you're looking at, no one would use Bloomberg. Your strategies shouldn't be a secret from the rest of your desk or your own company (assuming you're at a bank/hedge-fund/prop-house rather than a rent-a-desk prop-shop where everyone only works on their own accounts and thus the guy next to you is your competitor). The majority of traders aren't executing their own strategies anyway, but are working within a set of parameters set by their company or clients.

(ii) a) This is becoming less true, more and more banks etc. are allowing access to view Twitter, but not to post to it. b) I think you might have missed the point of the service where Bloomberg is offering a read only Twitter feed to avoid the problem of Twitter being blocked.

Trading strategies within a floor are shared, never with other firms, that is simply to shoot yourself on the foot.

Regarding Bloomberg knowing what you search for and look at, the confidentiality clauses are pretty strict in the service agreement.

Yes, that was the point I was making - your original post was implying that people won't use a Bloomberg feature because "other people might work out how they're trading".

i) From the OP: "the function does not allow users to tweet"

ii) The bloomberg connection doesn't go over their local firewall in the way you imagine. The tweets will be shown inside the terminal app, not via any connection to twitter.com

i) oversaw that statement, makes more sense now.

ii) understood, I guess you are right and makes all the sense to do it that way.

I like MG's comment on being included (@parislemon)

"Hope they like Giants baseball and then Michigan basketball tweets tomorrow…"

Hedge accordingly. :)

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