Robinhood Adds Social Media Feature to Mobile App

After moves involving banking and cryptocurrency, Robinhood is tackling a new frontier: social media.

The online brokerage is adding a social platform to its mobile app, part of a new suite of tools the company unveiled Wednesday (Sept. 10) at its HOOD Summit in Las Vegas.

“We’ve heard from active traders that they rely heavily on social media to navigate the markets,” Robinhood said in its announcement.

“But it’s harder than ever to understand what’s real and what isn’t. We’re changing that with Robinhood Social, where community is capital and you can follow other Robinhood traders, swap strategies, discuss market moves and trade with clarity.”

The new app also monitors market activity by “some of the market’s biggest power players who aren’t on Robinhood,” the company added. (A report by the Wall Street Journal gives the example of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.)

Robinhood said it will introduce an invitation-only version of the Robinhood Social early next year, with wider availability expected to follow.

In addition to the social media platform, Robinhood also announced enhancements to Robinhood Legend, the browser-based trading platform it launched last year.

“Not only are we expanding the number of assets available to trade on the platform, but we’re making it easier than ever for traders to analyze trends, research trades and explore new opportunities with Robinhood Cortex, our AI-powered investing assistant,” the company said.

The new offerings mark the latest example of Robinhood’s ongoing expansion beyond its roots. For example, the company announced in July it was making a major push into crypto, aiming to launch its own blockchain.

The company is also offering tokenized U.S. stocks to users overseas, though it has received some pushback from European regulators on the offering.

The company’s recent earnings report showed a 45% jump in revenue to just shy of $1 billion, and, as PYMNTS wrote, marked a “company pivoting sharply from its roots in commission-free retail trading toward a diversified, multilane financial platform.”

Revenues from the company’s crypto-related products rose 98% year-over-year to $160 million, while total notional crypto trading volumes reached $35 billion. A lot of that surge stems from Robinhood’s acquisition of the Bitstamp exchange in June.

Last week, Robinhood became one of the latest additions to the S&P 500. It will officially join the stock market index Sept. 22.