Method and apparatus of analyzing social network data to identify a financial market trend

A method comprising:

• determining, by a computing device of an online financial information provider, a trend in number of social media references to a financial market instrument using a corpus of social media posts of a number of users of at least one social media system, each social media post of the corpus containing a reference to the financial market instrument;
• and
• identifying, by the computing device, a sentiment associated with the financial market instrument using the corpus of social media posts;
• selecting, by the computing device, the financial market instrument using the determined trend in number of social media references to the financial market instrument and the identified sentiment associated with the financial market instrument;
• and
• displaying, via the computing device, information indicating the determined trend in number of social media references to the financial market instrument in a display of the online financial information provider at a number of client computing devices, the displaying comprising transmitting the information via an electronic communications network to the number of client computing devices.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium tangibly encoded with computer-executable instructions that when executed by a processor associated with a computing device perform a method comprising:

• determining a trend in number of social media references to a financial market instrument using a corpus of social media posts of a number of users of at least one social media system, each social media post of the corpus containing a reference to the financial market instrument;
• identifying a sentiment associated with the financial market instrument using the corpus of social media posts;
• selecting the financial market instrument using the determined trend in number of social media references to the financial market instrument and the identified sentiment associated with the financial market instrument;
• and
• displaying information indicating the determined trend in number of social media references to the financial market instrument in a display of an online financial information provider at a number of client computing devices, the displaying comprising transmitting the information via an electronic communications network to the number of client computing devices.

A computing device comprising:

• a processor;
• a non-transitory storage medium for tangibly storing thereon program logic for execution by the processor, the program logic comprising:
• determining logic executed by the processor for determining a trend in number of social media references to a financial market instrument using a corpus of social media posts of a number of users of at least one social media system, each social media post of the corpus containing a reference to the financial market instrument;
• identifying logic executed by the processor for identifying a sentiment associated with the financial market instrument using the corpus of social media posts;
• selecting logic executed by the processor for selecting the financial market instrument using the determined trend in number of social media references to the financial market instrument and the identified sentiment associated with the financial market instrument;
• and
• displaying logic executed by the processor for displaying information indicating the determined trend in number of social media references to the financial market instrument in a display of an online financial information provider at a number of client computing devices, the displaying comprising transmitting the information via an electronic communications network to the number of client computing devices.