Create a Trading Group Chat With Gizmo VoIP
Published March 14th, 2007 in Internet, Trading Tags: fad, gimmick, gizmo, SIP, traders, trading, trading chat, twitter, voice chat, voip.
I’ve been noticed twitter getting really popular and coming from under the shadow of a useless gimmick to be potentially quite useful. Personally I have my doubts.
If you’re not familiar with twitter, it is one of those web 2.0 apps which allows you to broadcast to the world little snippets. So you can tell the world: “I’m having a peanut-butter sandwich.” or “My jello pudding-pop just fell down.” Ultimately it’s about communication: real-time, fast, easy and cheap. In the hands of pre-adolescents it’s inane. But what about traders?
One challenge that that most traders have is that they are isolated. While most traders are proud to be on their own, this can get to you after a while. So a few have been putting these twitter widgets on their blog and sharing with the world (in almost real time) trading tidbits.
So why not use something like Gizmo VOIP to connect a group of remote traders in a conference call? Wouldn’t that be much more productive? With a headset you’d have your hands free to, you know, trade and to keep the chatter down you can mute your mic until you have something to say. Like twitter, it is free and blazingly fast (who can type as fast as they can talk?) . And unlike twitter, you get instant feedback (two way communication).
Sure, twitter is the hot thing right now (read: fad) but I think a real time voice chat is much more effective for traders. Of course, you would have to keep the group faily small and invite only (same as twitter). What do you think?
fad, gimmick, gizmo, SIP, traders, trading, trading chat, twitter, voice chat, voip
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You gave a lot of pros for the VOIP side, like instant communication and two-way feedback. I’ll give what I see as the pros of text like Twitter:
-You can read it any time–in real time or go browse it later. If you were away for a few minutes, you don’t miss something.
-Constant chatter could get annoying and distracting in a headset–text only bothers you if you open the window.
Rather than use as a trade chat, I see twitter as a mini-blog. Not important or relevant enough to dedicate to an entire post on an actual blog page? Just type a quick remark.
Prospectus,
Both options have merit, but I still think that twitter is more gimmicky than useful.
No matter what method of communication, being away for a few minutes will probably mean that you’ve missed an opportunity. As for constant chatter, it depends on the rules that everyone agrees to and the quality of the people involved.
I’ll keep an eye on all this twittering in the trading community. I’m not too proud to say it when I’m wrong
I dunno, I think we’re trying to solve different problems. To connect with people, I agree that text/audio/video conferencing is the way to go. I’m using twitter to broadcast realtime information, though, which is a different thing altogether. For that, it’s a great advantage to me that twitter communication doesn’t have to be two-way. 500 people can ‘follow’ (twitter-lingo) my market thoughts, and I don’t have to allow any of them to talk to me. In fact, I already have a few cases like that.