Ask Matt: Can Twitter help investors?

Q: Can Twitter help investors?

A: Even if you don't want Twitter (TWTR) stock in your portfolio, the service can be a useful tool for investors. The key is understanding how to glean insights from the non-stop stream of musings.

When Twitter launched, it was a great place to find out what your friends were eating for lunch. But as the microblogging site has matured, investors have turned to the system as a decent proxy for what the crowd is feeling about stocks and markets. Even large investment firms are building systems to mine the deluge of stock and market data from Twitter. Luckily, there are ways to strip away the annoying and needless information to get to some potentially useful insights. The best place to start - if you're curious about getting market data from Twitter - is with your brokerage. Some online brokerage firms are baking in social media tools that pull in data from Twitter. TD Ameritrade, for instance, has a "social signals" tab on its Web site that checks Twitter so you don't have to. The service tells you which company products are being talked about and whether Tweets are generally positive or negative toward the company. Another useful source is Market Prophit, a site that analyzes Twitter to tell you what the crowd is thinking. Whether you want to follow the crowd is up you.

USA TODAY markets reporter Matt Krantz answers a different reader question every weekday. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com or on Twitter @mattkrantz.