Following this week's news that social media has been approved as an official investor communications channel, Bloomberg has quickly responded by adding Twitter feeds into its terminals. This is a huge piece of news, as many banks have bans on the use of many social networks including Twitter due to regulations governing communication. Now because of the SEC ruling, Bloomberg has become something like the new Tweetdeck.

As the New York Times puts the news: "Bloomberg L.P. announced on Thursday that it was incorporating tweets into its data service, which is widely used in the financial industry. The new feature allows traders and other professionals to monitor social media buzz and important news about companies they follow." Tweets fed through are most likely due to come from official company feeds, company bosses, investors and economists.

We should expect a new set of skills to be of value on the trading floor, as navigating, tracking, searching and identifying key data on Twitter's half a billion tweets per day is not as straightforward was waiting for an alert to be fed through. As the Twitter-savvy know all too well, a single tweet is often just an abstract part of a multi-way conversation.

And tweeting CEOs - your follower counts may not increase overnight due to this, but you will have a large and influential audience tuning in through their terminals.

Photo courtesy of NYT.