Reuters announced to the Guardian last week that they are making another foray into the world of Web 2.0 with the setting up of a financial version of MySpace. This follows on the heels of last year’s creation of a Reuter’s news office inside the Second Life virtual world with a staff journalist sending virtual shorthand directly from the ‘new frontier’.
What do these announcements tell us about the direction of the business use of Web 2.0-style technology? I think this is interesting because either Reuters is a particularly unique and far-seeing company, happy to embrace the next big thing well before anyone else, or we are about to see a rash of ‘sensible’ and ‘grown up’ uses of what’s to date been mainly seen as a thing the kids are into. Watch this space.
Reuters are spending shareholders’ money, so they are obviously taking it seriously. They are currently in the process of increasing their Second Life team and I like their recent job advert for the Reuters Second Life news centre which begins: “Do you live inside Second Life?” and continues “we are looking for solid Second Life citizens – people whose avatars are at least six months old”. Interestingly, they “strongly prefer candidates based in the New York City area, as that is where the rest of our Second Life team is located.”
Tech Lunch 
June 28, 2007 at 10:42 am |
[…] Back in March I wrote that Reuter’s had announced plans to develop a corporate version of MySpace for people who […]