The Twitter-24/7 Wall St. Market Report (7/22/2011) GE, McDonald's, Caterpillar

Twitter  has, by most estimates, 225 million members, which makes it one of the largest social networks in the world. All major media companies are on Twitter and some have more than one million Twitter users. It raises the question of whether there is wisdom in crowds.

24/7 Wall St. will look at the Twitter posts at Reuters Biz, WSJ, Financial Times, CNN Money, MarketWatch, CNBC, and 24/7 Wall St. each day to see which stocks are most frequently mentioned. It is clear that in this area of social media these tweets are a sign of which companies the Twitter universe is interested in. Together, these financial sites are followed by nearly 1,000,000 Twitter users, which makes them a sizeable sample of Wall St.’s interests. In some cases, we will publish the actual tweets from the sites.

MSNBC: Apple joins Hulu bid talks: report http://on.msnbc.com/obRtfX

Yahoo! Finance: Apple joins Hulu bid talks: report http://yhoo.it/ofo2XX

FT: GE earnings climb 10% to $3.5bn http://on.ft.com/qlFt0v

NYT: G.E. Profit Exceeds Forecast http://nyti.ms/qS4f7u

Yahoo! Finance: Caterpillar profit misses Street forecasts http://yhoo.it/nHBRst

MarketWatch: McDonald’s says comp sales momentum continues in July; second-quarter profit tops forecast http://on.mktw.net/rlSmD2

CNBC: McDonald’s $MCD Q2 EPS & sales beat street. http://bit.ly/fJzHqh

Douglas A. McIntyre