StreamBase Systems, which creates software for capital markets, has added connectivity to Twitter for a number of clients -- although it is not saying which ones.
The application can read tweets as well as send them out. The company says its monitoring software is capable of coping with the enormous number of tweets that are sent -- estimated to be around two million a day.
Tweets are considered an "event source" because of the immediacy of the information -- for example, with the use of the site by Iranian democracy protesters, or with people caught in an earthquake.
However, the downside is that many tweeters are likely to tweet first and verify information later.
Mark Palmer, CEO of StreamBase, said: "We're seeing business applications that ingest Twitter message content, frequency, patterns, hashtag use, and so on, and then transmit Twitter messages.
"For example, trading systems or operations support can use Twitter direct messaging to alert users of trading opportunities or system problems.
"Systems can also use Twitter messages to assess economic sentiment in real-time for trading systems, or marketing analytics, through monitoring news headlines and popular sentiment transmitted via Twitter.
"And we've even seen interest from the government and security industries for in-bound Twitter message processing."