NASDAQ MarketSite is the commercial marketing presence of the NASDAQ stock market. Located in Times Square in New York City, it occupies the northwest corner of the bottom of 4 Times Square. The exterior wall of the seven-story cylindrical tower is an LED electronic video display that provides market quotes, financial news and advertisements. It was built in 1999 and made its debut on January 1, 2000. The ground floor of the glass-walled MarketSite contains a television studio. A wall of rear-projection monitors 44 feet long by 14 feet high display market conditions in real-time, providing reporters from CNBC, CNN, Yahoo! Finance, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Bloomberg Television, BBC, and other financial television networks a backdrop to present their reports. BusinessWeek's weekly syndicated newsmagazine also comes from the MarketSite. The Nasdaq MarketSite was a novel idea that took the electronic display of market data from simple LED stock tickers with arcane company trading symbols to sophisticated graphic displays including a logo ticker and other real-time market data. The original idea for MarketSite and the data visualizations and graphics came from Enock Interactive in New York City. The project was 10 years in the making prior to the Times Square launch. The technologies and processes used in the original Nasdaq MarketSite are protected under United States Patent issued July 25, 2006. Inventors were: Thomas Apple, Paul Noble, John Footen ; and Andrew Klein. The initial installation of the MarketSite was in the former Whitehall street location of Nasdaq. The current Times Square system and process have been upgraded and changed several times but remain protected by the broad claims and novel uses outlined in the original patent. The current MarketSite facility utilizes a complex system of videowall processors and data feeds to provide broadcasters with a dynamic real-time data background. This system shares nothing with the original Whitehall street iteration of the MarketSite, having been upgraded and redesigned several times due to advances in technology.
