Reuters The Latest To Want Its Own MySpace

from the first-second-life,-now-MySpace dept

Fri, Mar 2nd 2007 1:48pm — Joseph Weisenthal

We've seen plenty of examples of companies seeking to build their own versions of MySpace, and for the most part they inevitably end in failure. The latest company to announce something like this is Reuters, which says it will launch a MySpace for financial professionals later this year. The site will be a place for people to share research and trading strategies. It won't be the first attempt to do something like this, however. There are already sites that are trying to merge social networking with stock picking, with varying degrees of success. The idea of creating a site that offers a structured way for people to share research with each other isn't necessarily a bad idea, but the company seems to be shooting itself in the foot. Pitching it as something akin to MySpace isn't likely to make it very attractive to professionals. And the site will only be open to subscribers of Reuters' services, although the company is spinning this as a good thing. As CEO Tom Glocer put it, "People don't want to have 100 friend requests from teenage girls in Florida if they are trading the credit derivatives market, but they probably are interested in being able to share research." It's probably safe to say that this wouldn't be as much of a problem as he imagines.

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7 Comments

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Adam, 2 Mar 2007 @ 2:00pm

Tom Glocer is wrong...
as long as they are 18, people definitely want to have 100 friend requests from girls in Florida...
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- Michael Long, 2 Mar 2007 @ 2:17pm
  
  Re: Tom Glocer is wrong...
  Yeah, but they won't be girls in Florida, they'll all be staffers from "To Catch A Predator..."
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Maximus, 2 Mar 2007 @ 2:51pm

Good idea, now execute it
Sounds like a good idea to me. There have always been problems with ideas at the beginning- those will get ironed out over time.

However, the question is: can this be executed right? Execution is the difference between, for example, 37 signal's apps and all the bad management applications out there.

So, how will research be traded? How will it be check for accuracy? Are you sure people would want to trade their research at all?

And, to me it seems that opening this only to reuters members means that the user base won't be large enough to make this tool truely valuable. If I were reuter's, I'd build in a "pro" paid account type, and also have a free account.

-Max

Check out my blog
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Keybored, 2 Mar 2007 @ 4:26pm

Best Ever
Joe that was best commentary ever. Right on!
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Mark, 2 Mar 2007 @ 5:56pm

Nah...
It will simply turn out like the Y! finance forums. No real content, just a bunch of hooey.
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|333173|3|_||3, 2 Mar 2007 @ 9:19pm

Fraud
Think of the possibilities for fraud (pump and dump etc) on it. YOu could start all sorts of rumours to drive down stock prices, and buy up the stock dirt cheap. When it turns outto be wrong, the price goes back up and you sell. While this already happens, it would be so muchg easier on a specialised frorums for this.
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Dean Collins, 3 Mar 2007 @ 12:20pm

Features
It's all going to depend on the features and functionality that they put into the site.

Everyone should hold their own until we actually see what they have to offer.

As someone who visits stock chat forums etc from time to time I think that they could get a lot of traction with soemthing like this.

I question what it is Reuters hopes to gain from running a web 2.0 site though. What do they want to provide to 'their' community and what makes you think people are going to stay rather than go elsewhere?

I'm sure Reuters have some proprietary content they can provide to memebers that may interest some people but I think it's going to be all about Gee Wizz functions (and btw dont get it right the first time with something different out of the box then you may as well pack up and go home).

Cheers,
Dean
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