Twitter  has, by most estimates, 175 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.

Yahoo! Finance: Investors wait to see if Japan quake triggers catastrophe bondshttp://yhoo.it/ez0liF

CNNMoney: Oil prices fall below $100 a barrel after Japan earthquake and tsunami http://bit.ly/e8bz72 #Japan #tsunami #oil

WSJ: Japan Issues Emergency at Nuclear Plant http://on.wsj.com/ekxIV3

Reuters Biz: Retail sales rise 1.0 percent in February http://dlvr.it/Jwh9Z

MarketWatch: U.S. retail sales climb less-than-forecast 1% in Februaryhttp://on.mktw.net/f9ti7r

Yahoo! Finance: China’s February inflation higher than expected on sharp rise in food prices http://yhoo.it/dLgrfD

Douglas A. McIntyre