NYSE will use Twitter and Facebook if email fails

28.09.2012
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has said that it plans to use Twitter and Facebook for finding buyers and sellers to close daily trading, following a technical glitch that saw its usual method of email fail.

At the end of trading last week an email notification was meant to alert investors to a stock with an outsize number of unfilled buy orders, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, this email was delayed by seven minutes.

Such delays at close could have caused the stock to leap higher or drop lower than its final trading level. This led to NYSE sending traders a notification on Thursday, which said that if email alerts fail again it will use social media distribution channels to help address buy and sell imbalances.

The move reflects a growing trend where traditional exchanges are being forced to embrace digital technologies.

NYSE Jon Robson, a former Thomson Rueters chief, as its new head of NYSE Technologies. The position had been left vacant since Stanley Young left NYSE for a role at Bloomberg In May.