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Twitter integrations have become somewhat passé recently, as just about anyone looking for social media traffic has devised a way to auto-post links to the microblogging service. But an integration being released this morning by Covestor might spark your interest, especially if you’re an active trader in the stock market.

If you’re not familiar with it, Covestor basically lets you hook up your online brokerage account to its service so you can track your performance and that of other users. You can then see rankings of who the most successful traders are (as measured by things like performance year-to-date) and follow the actions (buys, sells, and commentary) of other users. With the Twitter integration, you can now get those notifications in real-time, as users actions are posted instantly to your timeline. Since Covestor is hooked up to your brokerage account, the symbol, price, and time are all verified.

While technically speaking Twitter notifications are no big deal, it is a very interesting development for the online investing community and one that could propel Covestor into further mainstream adoption. While the buy/sell recommendations of Wall Street analysts (the Citigroup and JPMorgan’s of the world) move stocks up and down almost instantly, it will be interesting to see if Covestor can have a similar impact at a microlevel, giving successful users the influence to move stocks up and down as their trades are broadcast in real-time to thousands of followers on Twitter.

With prominent investors like Fred Wilson, Howard Lindzon, and enormously successful trader Timothy Sykes (currently with a 1,351% annualized return) using the service, a buy or sell notification from an influencer could certainly lead other investors to act similarly, hence, leading stocks to move one way or another. And until everyone else catches on to what’s causing the movement, it could briefly create a small competitive advantage for people who subscribe to Covestor’s most successful users (similar to the Jim Cramer Effect that existed briefly after Mad Money premiered on CNBC).

It reminds me a bit of IRC in the late 90s, where day traders congregated in chat rooms and certain power users actions lead to a flurry of buy/sell activity on the likes of Iomega , Imclone, and whatever other stocks were the respective flavors of the hour. Of course, what Covestor adds to the mix that these chat rooms lacked is authentication, meaning the reputations of power users are actually verified and earned through successful trading (as opposed to less scrupulous methods).

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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Covestor Raises Funding For Real-Trade Sharing Service
Covestor’s First Steps Towards Full API
Covestor Raises $6.5M for Social Investing
Covestor Emerges from Beta: Join Without Giving Up the Goods
Mosio Uses Twitter For Mobile Q&A
Covestor Pays You to Pick Good Stock
Twitter + Uptime Monitoring = MoniTwitter

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