Tweets could impact Netflix stock holders

Last year's Twitter Inc. posts related to Netflix Inc. could have had an effect on the number of stock holders, according to Bloomberg.

Topsy Lab Inc. analyzed tweets during the time Netflix announced to split its online streaming and mail DVDs, the report says.

The company looked at both positive and negative posts such as "just canceled my Netflix subscription" or “Netflix split a good move for the company.”

“Information dissemination is now largely not through publication, but through conversation,” Rishab Ghosh, co-founder and vice president of research at Topsy Lab, told Bloomberg. “We’ve actually been able to show that you can take that data, put it through processing, and relate it to the market return for a specific stock.”

By performing an analysis of the posts, Topsy was able to foresee a drop in the market.

These results could surface when fourth quarter earnings for Netflix are released on Wednesday.

Netflix shares rank among some of "the best-performing shares for the year to date," according to Forbes.

The stock has recovered almost 45 percent following a plummet after a July announcement of splitting the company into two businesses, which was quickly dismissed.

The change resulted in a loss of 800,000 U.S. customers from the end of June through the end of September, according to the Associated Press.

In July, the shares were nearly $300 and by the end of December they were sitting at $69.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told the Associated Press that he predicted the number of customers leaving wouldn't be as high during the last three months of the year.

Experts speaking to Forbes agreed that current and future investors would focus on the number of subscribers to Netflix.

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