Thomson Reuters launches 'YouTube' for Wall Street
Mar 03, 2009
‘It’s both a product and a platform,’ executive says
Thomson Reuters today announced that it will soon be offering an online video channel for finance professionals. The programming, to be accessible via an icon on the desktop of subscribers, will draw on the news and market intelligence produced by the recently merged companies, as well as third-party content.
Over the last months, the company has quietly hired more than 100 new staff with broadcast experience from places like CNN, CNBC and the BBC. They will be teaming up with the existing legion of Thomson Reuters’ journalists and analysts as well as outside partners to present work on screen in new ways. The company has built television studios in its Hong Kong, London and New York offices and will have cameras in every news bureau.
The top programming will run on demand on the so-called Channel One, and there will be specialty channels covering topics like sales and trading, foreign exchange and sector analysis. The developers say the coverage will have a sophistication unmatched by rivals like CNBC that target the retail investor.
Michael Stepanovich, managing editor of the project now being called ‘Reuters Insider’, says guests who have been involved in test programming have welcomed the new outlet. ‘The level of discussion they can have on our programs is much deeper,’ he says.
Stepanovich also says the product, to launch in June, will differ in a number of other ways from what exists in today’s market. A key difference will be the embedding of tools that allow video to be searched by names or key terms and tied to related content.
As video airs, it will be immediately accompanied by a running transcript and indexed by key terms. Those key terms, or search terms chosen by the user, will help populate the screen with material and ideas referenced in the report.
Users can annotate video with their own commentary, string together clips in a montage and share them with others or push them to handheld devices like BlackBerrys. The sifting and editing capabilities will be important for busy financial professionals, developers say. ‘The point is not just to deliver the video, but to deliver the right part of the video,’ Stepanovich says, calling the product ‘a little bit YouTube, a little bit iPhone.’
The tool will also aggregate a wide variety of third-party content, and Thomson Reuters is looking for 50 to 75 content partners. Contributors will be able to control who among the 550,000 Thomson Reuters subscribers sees their content and ‘narrowcast’ to them. ‘It’s both a product and a platform,’ says markets division CEO Devin Wenig of the service, which will carry no advertising.
Thomson Reuters is committing $1 bn to the project and related product announcements will follow. ‘We’re at the beginning of the biggest innovation period our company has maybe ever had,’ Wenig says.
By Anna Snider