11:16 AM
Finance Professionals Get To Make Own Videos Via Thomson Reuters Platform
As buy-side professionals get inundated with an increasing barrage of research and information about the markets, they are looking for a solution that can be more efficiently integrated into their workflow, according to Thomson Reuters.
The multimedia news agency is addressing this challenge by now enabling its financial professional customers to easily become video producers and quickly create, organize, and publish their own professional videos containing their research and analysis on a single platform and distribute it to their peers.
Using proprietary editing technology somewhat similar to Apple's consumer friendly iMovie editing software, Thomson Reuters' Multimedia Centre enables firms to easily edit their own videos, as well as integrate charts, slides and titles into the images.
The Multimedia Centre is a new addition to the Reuters Insider, which was originally launched last summer as an on-demand video platform aggregating original programming from Reuters as well as 200 content partners globally (including video from Wall Street & Technology and sibling brand Advanced Trading).
The video platform enables users to customize the videos they want to see appear on their screen, as well as see a voice-generated transcript of each video and click on a particular word in the script to go directly to the spot in the video where that word is spoken. The service currently has one and a half million viewers worldwide, Thomson Reuters said.
"The sell side has seen a drop off in research downloaded. There's so much information put in the marketplace," Steve Longley, VP, global business development and strategy, Thomson Reuters, said in an interview with Wall Street & Technology.
Longley says the market has seen a huge demand for multimedia solutions, with firms increasingly wanting "good analytical rich content."
But it is the Reuters network and distribution that make the Multimedia Centre particularly compelling to financial firms, according to Longley.
"It's the first foray into video for a lot of these customers. We're ahead of the curve. It's very nascent. But the stats we're seeing are justifying the evolution and investment in this format. Firms are looking at multimedia and mobile as a new format to evolve their products, as it can be integrated in the workflow of financial professionals much more efficiently today," he adds.
Longley is particularly excited by the fact that the Multimedia Centre is being driven by financial professionals and business professionals themselves, rather than the traditional media. "[Capital markets firms] are saying we need to evolve to stay relevant. If we don't evolve we're going to become obsolete very quickly," he suggests.
The market will see a big push in virtual corporate meetings that will happen on the platform, and it will become more interactive, Longley says.
Melanie Rodier has worked as a print and broadcast journalist for over 10 years, covering business and finance, general news, and film trade news. Prior to joining Wall Street & Technology in April 2007, Melanie lived in Paris, where she worked for the International Herald ... View Full Bio