Reuters will launch a MySpace like community for financial people

The Guardian reported that Reuters will launch a "Financial MySpace" for its 70,000 subscribers. By coincidence, yesterday I spoke with the Executive VP at Reuters responsible for this project. He is an old friend and he wanted my opinion on some possible technologies. I didn't ask if this discussion was under NDA since we are friends, so I will not reveal any secrets here.

I can say that this will not be a MySpace style public community. It will be a controlled secure environment for financial people to share information, ask questions, review research, and will include tools like blogs, wikis, podcasts, Instant Messaging, file sharing, and perhaps photos and videos.

Here is a quote from the Reuters CEO in the Guardian article;

"You will see us, later in the year, launch a version of MySpace for the financial services community," said the chief executive, Tom Glocer. "It won't have the latest hot videos and the 'why I am into Metallica and the Arctic Monkeys' blogs. Instead we are going to give our financial services users the ability to post their research or if they are traders, their trading models."

Good Morning Silicon Valley says;

Reuters has not been shy about showing up in the latest cybervenues, opening a bureau in Second Life last year (see "Oh great -- avatar-on-the-street interviews"). "I would still put this strongly in the realm of experimentation," Glocer said, "but it's a nice controlled experiment that has probably paid for itself 10 times over in marketing."

ValleyWag is cynical and snarky as usual. You gotta love those guys;

Perhaps I radically underestimate the desires of fund managers to add each other as friends and play obscure emo tracks on their homepage, but this seems like needlessly reinventing the wheel. If Reuters wanted to court financial folk, why not just brand and customize an existing social media space? A Reuters Financial Facebook, or something. The newscorp isn't giving out many details, so perhaps that's exactly what they're doing. One Myspace is enough (and more than enough) already.

Reuters is in the information business. Their subscribers pay big bucks for access to their financial data and news. Offering a web 2.0 style collaboration environment that is private and secure makes sense for their subscribers. The Reuters subscribers will interact with the community and build relationships that can't be replicated elsewhere. Reuters will enjoy high renewal rates each year, and probably attract more subscribers. That is good business.

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Comments

[Lloyd Budd]

Sounds like a refresh of the ideas that made fool.com popular in the 90s.

[TanNg]

I wonder where is Windows Live, office live platform's presence in this project. It's seems that MS is less and less relevant to the internet ecosystem.