Some may think social media is about personal connections and sharing of photos. Others believe it to be about the expedient delivery of to-the-minute news. Wall Street finds it to be potentially profitable.

This interesting topic was found on Mashable.com in their article, “Why Wall Street Is Betting Big on Your Social Media Data.” Many are betting that they can use social media networks to reliably predict how the markets for their investments will trend. One London-based investment manager says it will launch a fund dedicated entirely to using Twitter for investment decisions.

Investment managers are searching for the next best thing to make money. This untraditional approach surprises some. It isn’t the Hollywood-profiled image of Wall Street gurus. It is computer driven research used to buy and sell massive volumes.

Where this will go is yet to be seen, but it is interesting to see technology advance and semantic technology working with social media.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.