Presenting a webinar yesterday, I spent a bit of time talking about Twitter in banking.
Brian Hartzer, the former CEO of ANZ, has been an avid tweeter and even announced his departure from ANZ on Twitter (he's taking over Retail Banking at RBS in the UK).
More recently sites such as Stocktwits and Twitscoop allow you to follow news and views on stocks and celebrities, whilst Pollytrade even integrates your Twitter stock picks with e*trade and other electronic broker sites.
All well and good.
However, as demonstrated by the recent tsunami of stories about Michael Jackson, be aware that all that twitters is not told.
For example, with Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson both shuffling off their mortal coil, we now find Britney Spears, Jeff Goldblum and other major stars have disappeared with them.
Britney tweeted her way off the planet whilst Jeff jumped over a cliff.
No truth to this of course but, just like nasty stock rumours, if you want to earn some cash just tweet that "Richard Branson is diagnosed with the black plague" or "Michael Dell leaves to become Born-Again Christian Monk" and see what happens to the Virgin and Dell stock prices …
… oh, what fun.
Not.