When world’s richest man says something, people listen and this was apparent with respect to stock market investors who recently misconceived a tweet by Elon Musk asking his followers to use ‘Signal app’ and this vague recommendation led to 500%  boost in shares of an unrelated company (Signal Advance) by the similar name.

Issuing a clarification on company’s identity followed by the overwhelming surge in company’s stock, Chris Hymel on Friday said “We strongly recommend people do their due diligence and always invest with care. Signal Advance doesn’t have an association with Musk or the Signal app.” Bloomberg reported

The story goes back to Thursday when Tesla CEO tweeted ‘Use signal’ and this message prompted people to invest heavily in the company to get effective returns, but investors ended up investing in Signal Advance , a Texas-based technology company dedicated to healthcare and industrial applications.

According to Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Signal Advance hasn’t filed an annual report with the agency since 2019 and generated no revenue from 2014 to 2016.

However, the ‘Signal’ Musk was referring to is a social media app that uses end to end encryption for messages and is considered a potential contender to Whatsapp and Facebook.

Meanwhile Signal app, on Saturday also broke silence on the incident and took to Twitter to let people know that they had picked the wrong company.

The debate around Signal and other messaging app sparked when WhatsApp, last week, sent an app notice to its users last week, informing them about its updated privacy policy and terms of service which will take effect from February 8.

The key changes include how the app shares information with Facebook and its subsidiaries and how it collects and handles user data. Users will have to accept the changes in order to continue using the application.

Since then, concerned users are indulged in conversation around finding an appropriate alternative to Whatsapp, hence the signal tweet.