Steven Bartlett’s new tool measures social media impact on share prices

Dragons’ Den star and host of hit podcast The Diary of a CEO Steven Bartlett has launched a new tool to measure the impact of social media on markets, as part of his latest venture Flight Story.

Bartlett found success with social media content and marketing firm The Social Chain which he launched at the age of 21.

Within six years he had built it into an international agency which listed on the Dusseldorf Stock Exchange.

Alongside former Social Chain managing director Oliver Yonchev, Bartlett launched Flight Story at the end of 2021, capitalising on the intersection between social media and the rise in young DIY investors. 

It sets out to introduce companies which are looking to list or are already listed to the people and technology needed to increase retail investor interest.

Bartlett told This Is Money last year: ‘It might sound crazy, but I had phone calls from family offices that were telling me they now believe a successful TikTok strategy could sway their market cap by billions.

‘This is the world we’re living in, if you’re a public company and you don’t understand the opportunity and value of these social media platforms, and how they’re influencing – directly and indirectly the performance of your share price and of your public opinion, then you need to turn the lights on because you’re driving in the dark, and sooner or later you’re going to crash.’

Today the company launches Flight Deck, a tool that converts social media interactions, search data and paid media reach, which is cross-referenced with trading volume. 

This allows companies to identify the channels, activity and interactions that moved the market.

Bartlett’s new venture Flight Story will today launch an AI tool to help companies gauge how social media moves markets

Chief strategist Mike Blake-Crawford said: ‘Multiple data points, including volume, topics, emotion and even demographics of those engaged with specific companies can be analysed, providing invaluable insight into the factors driving retail investor behaviour.

‘For companies going public, having access to this data is powerful, but the ability to understand it is invaluable, and that is where Flight Deck provides an incredible solution.’

Bartlett added: ‘Retail investors have taken control of the stock market and their influence is only going to grow. Over the last few years, we’ve seen time and time again how social media has driven share prices – for better, and sometimes for worse.’

‘Public companies need to build resilient investor communities but before now understanding the impact of social chatter was impossible. There’s so much noise, conversation is moving at the speed of light and the consequences of that social noise are seemingly impossible to unpack, understand, and utilise. 

‘After hundreds of conversations with public market CEOs, from every corner of the world, we set out to create a world-leading tool to solve this problem and Flight Desk does just that.’