Reuters Launching Financial MySpace Site

Reuters is planning to launch a Web 2.0 community networking site for the financial sect including fund managers, traders and analysts. The site will be based on the MySpace model, with user profiles and networking capabilities and is scheduled to launch later this year.

This is yet another example of the growing trend of niche social networking sites. Distancing themselves from the MySpace crowd, Reuters will look to provide a more professional destination for the more than 70,000 subscribers of its messaging service. It's easy to understand why financial analysts would be more likely to network through a Reuters site than MySpace, where they would be sharing a community loaded with spammers, pornographers and unsigned bands. It also makes sense that financial experts would feel safer exchanging ideas and information through a specialty site.

"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," said Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer.

It's looking more and more that MySpace will regress to much the same way it started. There are plenty of statistics to support the theory that the MySpace crowd is getting older. However, it's difficult to find evidence that businesses are experiencing great windfalls from the site either. It's not hard to imagine MySpace reverting back to focusing on social networking for the teen sector and as a way for music hopefuls to get some publicity. I think as we see more specialty sites, and as social networking becomes easier to adopt and integrate, the major sites will find themselves scrambling for their own identity.