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Applications that provide technical analysis of market information have proved to be among the most popular for users of Bloombergs App Portal, followed by apps that offer sentiment analysis of Twitter or other social media channels.

Launched in November 2012, the Bloomberg App Portal is a platform through which independent software vendors can partner with Bloomberg to distribute their solutions to users of the Bloomberg Professional service. Bloomberg hosts the apps and manages the operational infrastructure including connectivity and billing. A little more than two years since its launch, the portal now hosts approximately 100 applications.

One of the things that became pretty clear as we looked at the activity and we saw ideas come in and succeed and fail is that users are looking for actionable inputs, says Claudio Storelli, Bloombergs chief operating officer for enterprise solutions, who heads Bloomberg App Portal.

Technical analysis tools, Storelli explained, are statistical and analytical techniques used to analyze market data and make predictions, such as when might be optimal times to enter or exit the market. Because they provide actionable insight, they are highly complementary to Bloombergs services.

Bloomberg provides everything you need to create market philosophies, but we dont create those philosophies or provide you with what we think is the answer. We tell you here are the toolkits, Storelli says. Technical analysis tools, on the other hand, would provide mathematical theories and frameworks that, when superimposed over a chart, might give more actionable suggestions about when, according to their framework, changes are about to occur in the market.

Some users like to follow technical strategies, and other quantamentalists like to blend fundamental analysis of companies with a layer of technical analysis to help time market conditions that might affect the companies they are following, he said.

About 30 of the apps on the portal are related to technical analysis, Storelli says, adding that it is one of the areas that gets most activity.

The App Portal has also seen a rise in interest in applications that analyze and quantify social media sentiment, Storelli says. As much of market data is based on trading activity, users are looking for data earlier in the process, such as data about products that may later be later evidenced in a companys quarterly figures. This type of data has received increased attention through many channels recently, and Bloomberg has its own version of this type of analysis on the Bloomberg Professional platform as well.

We have our own approach, but the spirit of the app portal is to let 1,000 flowers bloom, Storelli said.

The portal has a strenuous screening process, Storelli says, to ensure that applications are viable, sufficiently unique, and related to market data and market analysis. The screening process is also intended to ensure that there is sufficient commitment from the software vendor to develop an idea into a customer-ready application.

Vendors may charge a fee to users for the use of their applications, or in some cases applications are offered for free. Fees are set by vendors, and Bloomberg handles the infrastructure management of the app, including billing. Vendors that charge fees for their apps enter revenue-sharing relationships with Bloomberg.

An increasing number apps on the portal are created by investment banks or buy-side institutions that make applications available to a select portion of the user base at no charge, Storelli says. Investment banks may want to distribute their technology to clients, for example, and buy-side firms may want to distribute to their own employee user-base. Recent examples include Citis Total Touch Price and Credit Suisses HOLT company analyzer.