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FT.com builds on Alphaville success with Long Room launch

Posted: 25/10/08 By: Judith Townend

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In the past, influential financiers in the know exchanged gossip over a drink in London's Long Room off Throgmorton Street, in the heart of the City of London.

Those days are gone, but now FT.com is bringing the renowned bar and restaurant online with the launch of a virtual Long Room, 'a new comment and analysis area', where registered users can join 'tables' ordered by topic or create their own.

In September, FT.com reported that its financial blog, FT Alphaville, 'exploded' in traffic as a result of the economic downturn. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) figures for March, the blog has 7.1 million unique users, including 750,000 registered users.

FT.com has become increasingly aware, however, that the Alphaville community is developing outside of its walls and branching off onto external blogs.

People wanted to have conversations at times outside the 10am-12pm Markets Live slot, Rob Grimshaw, FT.com's managing director told Journalism.co.uk.

In the new Long Room users will be able to leave comments, present themselves in the form of an avatar and upload documents and graphics.

The original Long Room was 'renowned for where you went to find out what was really going on,' Grimshaw said.

The new version is 'a real major step forward on slick modern platform', he said.

Soft-launched today, Grimshaw told Journalism.co.uk that users who had already tried the online community 'loved it'.

The aim is to create a very vibrant and diverse community, he said, to 'allow people to post really very rich content and material'.

"We know from Markets Live that they [the users] are enormously enthusiastic," Grimshaw said, adding that some of the two hour sessions saw 500 comments posted.

There is currently no specific advertising on the site, but this is something FT.com is keen to introduce, with the possibility of advertisers sponsoring specific tables or topics.

The site will be free to use, but participants will have to register basic details and then be 'invited' to join the forum. Additional information from users will help marketing and advertising, said Grimshaw.

The FT launch will need the 'appropriate person to be in the Long Room discussing things', he added.

"There are some people who come on Alphaville and comment anonymously but journalists are aware of who they are," he said.

"We'll take the spirit through to Long Room. It's free, but to some extent it's going to be a little bit clubby."

"Alphaville is a really exciting area of FT.com, where we're truest to the web medium," Grimshaw said, adding that the new room is an 'extension of that proposition'.

Plans to launch a mobile version of the Long Room are scheduled and additional user-generated content such as video and audio are part of long-term developments scheduled for the project, he said.

The Long Room will also be targeted at FT.com's international audience, which its Markets Live UK feature may not sufficiently serve, because of its UK-orientated timeslot.

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