The microblogging outfit revealed the plan through its own Twitter account, adding the '$' sign to its '#' and '@' features (although it does not currently appear to work as a link in embedded tweets):

Now you can click on ticker symbols like $GE on twitter.com to see search results about stocks and companies

- Twitter (@twitter) July 31, 2012

The move has been slammed by Howard Lindzon, CEO of Stocktwits, who has accused the site of copying his creation despite telling him just months ago that it had no plans to do so.

Says Lindzon in a blog post: "I am disappointed of course that Twitter is hijacking our idea and time (will only confuse the masses), but Stocktwits moved beyond that basic functionality 4 years ago. In a dirty way, it's the ultimate compliment so we will take it as such for the moment and keep rolling out functionality that makes us the best real-time communication platform for people that love stocks and markets."