We measure success of our Scratch-related workshops not only by the number of girls or women we reach, but by the depth and range of understanding Computation Thinking, which in common terms, means understanding how to think like a programmer; In other words, how to deconstruct larger problems, see repetition, create efficient structures that handle repetitive tasks, and the skill to create one’s own recipe, or algorithm to complete a task.
Nosal said: “We have seen regulators taking a broader focus to electronic communications, with an emphasis on email and voice communications, though social media is certainly on the regulatory radar as it’s becoming a generally accepted mode of communicating.”
A spokesman at the FCA did not cite any specific technology but said the regulator uses a wide range of tools, including social media, to monitor trends and track what is happening in the industry. A spokeswoman for the US Securities and Exchange Commission said the watchdog monitors social media but declined to comment on what tools it uses.
To help watchdogs sift through a gargantuan pool of data, technology vendors are offering and developing sophisticated tools that aggregate and analyse what is being said on social media. These can be used by regulators to spot illicit activity or by compliance officers to prevent wrongdoing.
Ashley Hurst, a partner at law firm Olswang, said: “Social media monitoring and analytics tools could be used to spot a range of regulated activity, including in particular financial promotions and market manipulation caused by publishing misleading information or sharing inside information.”
Nasdaq OMX’s Smarts partners with Smarsh, a company that archives and monitors social media communications. Business information provider Thomson Reuters offers social media analysis through Thomson Reuters News Analytics, an instrument that turns news into data that trading algorithms can understand and act upon. The instrument gathers data from over four million social media sources and, although it was initially created for trading, the analysis it provides can also be used by regulators to spot signs of fraudulent operations or stock manipulation.
Thomson Reuters also offers a series of indices that track real-time market sentiment by analysing news and social media. Regulators could, for instance, use these indices to pinpoint stocks of companies with the highest social media anger, or the greatest number of disgruntled investors. This insight could give them clues for where to look for anomalies.
Asif Alam, global head of machine-readable business at Thomson Reuters, said: “Social media is a great tool, because now you have this whole gigantic new massive data that is sitting out there, so how do you use it to your advantage?”
Regulators and compliance officers could also benefit from the insight that social media data can give into relationship networks.
Sprinklr, a firm that provides a social media management system for enterprises, offers a tool that helps create social graphs or maps of connections between people based on social media interactions and data.
Ragy Thomas, chief executive and founder of Sprinklr, said: “There is a whole second layer of information including social graphing which will help you understand quite precisely connections between people that aren’t obvious – helping you spot two people talking to each other that seemingly have nothing in common.”
A similar tool could be used, for example, to find out how someone suspected of insider trading might be linked to the company whose stocks he has been buying or selling.
Although social media monitoring technologies are being developed quickly and gaining traction, market participants say they still need to be perfected before use by regulators and compliance officers at financial institutions becomes widespread.
Martin Porter, business development director at surveillance company b-next, said: “Social media financial surveillance is available but is still, for many, a futuristic thought and will bring more challenges around solution and data-related costs.”
One of the challenges is keeping up with the rapidly growing volume of data, which is making it harder and more expensive to aggregate and analyse unstructured data, such as texts in tweets.
Steve Wilcockson, financial services industry manager at mathematical computing software provider MathWorks, said: “The scale of the data problem is twofold. First, how do you mine the web as it grows significantly and, secondly, making sense of the textual trends is a more complicated process.”