Reuters Adds Yahoo to Reuters Messaging

LONDON—Market data provider Reuters has announced that it has added support for Yahoo Messenger in its 6.0 release of Reuters Messaging in an effort to gain traction in the energy trading markets, vendor officials tell DWT.

Yahoo Messenger has become the de facto communications tool for commodity and energy markets between traders and between front- and back-office users, explains David Gurlé, executive vice president and global head of Reuters Collaboration Services.

"When we approached the energy market customers in different regions in the world, they said they liked Reuters Messaging as a solution but could not use it without connectivity to Yahoo," says Gurlé. "This is really where the market is, so that has been a driver for us."

Yahoo represents the third instant messaging (IM) service that the Reuters Messaging supports, he says. The platform has supported AOL and MSN IM services since early 2006 and the vendor has been working with Yahoo for the last 10 months leading up to the support of Yahoo Messenger.

The partnerships with the various IM services is a case of connectivity rather than true integration, says Gurlé.

Reuters Messaging provides secure interfaces to each of the supported IM networks and uses a standard special initiation protocol to create the connection.

The Yahoo and MSN IM services are relatively dominant in Europe and Asia, whereas AOL is more dominant in the U.S., says Gurlé. With this release, Reuters hopes to expand its global reach, he says.

Reuters is also in discussion with other third-party IM providers and hopes to announce new partnerships in 2008, say Gurlé. He decines to identify those firms. "There are not many providers left though," he adds.

The vendor also plans to launch a Web-based collaboration platform using Web 2.0 technology later this year. The interface will be called Reuters Space and Gurlé likens it to an enterprise version of the online social community MySpace.

The new solution will target the capital markets initially and then the wider financial markets, he says. Users will be able to view profiles, link to counterparties, and post blogs, and it will be seamlessly integrated with Reuters Messaging. Pages are designed to be accessible to people both inside and outside firms, but firms can limit access depending on their individual privacy policies, he says.