StockTwits, a social network for stock market investing, returned from the U.S. 4th of July holiday with a double bang. The San Diego-based company today announced it not only closed on new funding, but also appointed a new CEO.
The $2 million funding round was led by Social Leverage and brings the company’s total to $13 million. StockTwits will use the funds to boost engagement by adding premium features and content such as video to help engage users. 
The company counts 1.5 million active users each month, 60% of which are under the age of 44.
Driving this change is Ian Rosen (pictured right), who has been appointed CEO of StockTwits effective July 6. Rosen served as an advisor to the company since 2013 and is taking the seat of Howard Lindzon who founded StockTwits in 2008. Lindzon has filled the role of executive chairman. Rosen most recently served as CEO of Even Financial, a supply side platform for online lending. Prior to that he was general manager of financial media business MarketWatch.
At FinDEVr San Francisco 2014, Lindzon showed off the company’s API that provides financial institutions real-time data on stock market sentiment. The company plans to further leverage and grow how it uses this data. Speaking to TechCrunch, Lindzon said, “data business is doubling this year and we are focused on widening the top of the brand funnel with some new ideas.”
In addition to its FinDEVr presentation, StockTwits has also presented at FinovateEurope 2011 where it debuted its blog network and StockTwits Connect. The company is the inventor of the CashTag, a method of linking a company stock to a feed using a dollar sign, for example $AAPL.
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