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Davis Janowski

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Video. How does, can, will watching talking heads help you in your practice as a financial adviser?

I can't answer that, not yet anyway.

What I can tell you is that from a technologist's perspective Reuters Insider is slick.

Thomson Reuters today announced the launch of Insider, the company's interactive on-demand video platform.

It will have content produced by Thomson Reuters and their network of thousands of reporters as well as its more than 150 “content partners” around the globe.

Any adviser with access to the Thomson One platform is supposed to have access to Insider as of today, and it is free. More on this later.

For the demographic that includes big-time institutional investors, investment bankers and traders whose decisions might very well hang on the words of an analyst being interviewed I think this will be big.

For the legion of financial advisers it might be just one more draw on your attention.

It is hard to say.

Keep in mind that this comes from a journalist who couldn't fathom how YouTube would ever gain real popularity, let alone make any money, when it was demonstrated to me in beta several years ago.

To me what makes Insider most interesting is that the frontend is attractively designed, intuitive and that a major component of that frontend involves simple end user tools.

The word “tools” often scares some of the folks I write for so let me put you at ease by simplifying things. Think of these more as buttons that operate much more complex chores behind the scenes.

For example, lets say you just watched a five minute analyst interview on Insider (none of the video content on the network is supposed to go beyond seven minutes by the way, the bulk of it I'm told will stay in the three-minute to five-minute timeframe in terms of length).

You think a colleague — one with access to Insider — will be interested in a 30-second snippet of that interview. You can quickly drag/click a beginning (green) and ending (red) button to those seconds and send only that bit to your colleague via a link.

This can be done in two ways: Simply dragging along the timeline bar like you would in YouTube to get to the part you want or by scanning through or searching the transcript on the right of the screen that has keyword metatags embedded in it.

These user tools are what I think will be the key that will allow for widespread adoption and emulation if anything does. You aren't having to truly edit video files and save them and attach them to an e-mail.

Reuters Insider is going to make it very simple for financial services firms to “self-broadcast” their own market commentary, morning calls, research, trade ideas, etc. — at least to all those already on the Thomson Reuters system.

I'm continuing to update this post as time allows this afternoon.

I visited the Thomson Reuters New York HQ in Times Square today to see the rollout for myself.

I was greeted by no less than David Schlesinger, Editor-in-Chief of Reuters News, John Fennelly, global managing director of wealth management at Thomson Reuters, and Steven Longley, vice president of global development strategy at Thomson Reuters (and a dedicated member of the Insider team).

I saw an Insider-dedicated studio, a dedicated control room, and a quarter of the Reuters newsroom that was all dedicated to the new platform — setups that I was told were mimicked in London and Hong Kong as well.

I also sat in a conference room that had four big expensive professional automated digital video cameras built into its corners where roundtable discussions can be hosted, recorded, and broadcast from.

All this, combined with the guy trying to wheel in a cart of champagne bottles (with a cart of barbecue behind that I was told) tells me that this is technology Thomson Reuters is banking on.

You can see the accompanying slideshow for some photos (sorry I’m not yet at the level of delivering video myself!).

Some technical aspects

The video player is “completely Flash-based and in the Cloud” according to Mr. Longley.

Interestingly, I also got to see Insider running on both an iPhone and an iPad (see the slideshow).

That is part of a “secret sauce” workaround that the Thomson Reuters folks said they couldn’t really elaborate on at this time. The point though is that Insider works on both devices — a lot of electrons have been spilled on the lack of Flash support with the iPad.

I was told at the meeting that Insider is embedded in the Thomson One desktop with the “ability for users to turn it on.” (I’m anxious to hear from brokers that have had a chance to play with it so please write me (djanowski@investmentnews.com) or post a comment here).

Users are able to set keyword alerts on their desktop so that if something is posted on Insider they are interested in they will be notified.

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