Reporting on financial markets has changed little over recent decades. The rumour mill may have moved from the dining rooms of the City's finest eateries to the mobile and blackberry, but ultimately the efforts of the markets reporter still result in a daily digest of what's moving in the marketplace. Despite the improvements in technology delivering more relevant news faster into the business newsroom, markets reporting remains structured around a daily press cycle.
With many more ways to trade and new markets opening all the time, investors and other finance professionals are increasingly profiting from short-term positions that do not allow time for digesting news on a 24 hour publishing cycle.
'Today' is old news
Markets move by the second, not by the day, and technology can provide the ability to bring real-time publishing to real-time business news. With world class, razor sharp insight and cutting edge technology, The Financial Times and Assanka have created Alphaville: the world's first live publishing platform for markets news and commentary.
The Financial Times is known globally as one of the world's leading business newspapers, recognised internationally for it's authority, integrity and accuracy. Through FT.com, the world's most popular business website, the formiddable strength of FT's editorial team finds a global audience on the web.
Combining the technological expertise of Assanka's Web 2.0 team and a dedicated FT editorial team headed by development editor Paul Murphy, Alphaville represents the cutting edge of real-time market reporting.
As fast as it gets
The Alphaville day starts at around 3am London time, when reporters in FT's Hong Kong office start compiling the stories that will matter to London's business community today. By 5:45am, these stories are online and visible on Alphaville's front page, and at a few minutes to six everything that's been published so far is sent out to thousands of Blackberries and other handheld devices across the capital, along with many desktop subscribers. The 6AM Cut kick-starts traffic to Alphaville as the City wakes up and the London Alphaville team takes over publishing content.
As traders and investors arrive at work and log on to Alphaville, the team are busy publishing breaking stories and preparing for the daily Markets Live broadcast. Every time a new post is made, it slides unprompted onto the screens of all current users, making Alphaville a genuinely live website - there's never any need to refresh to get new content. At 11am, it's on air for Markets Live, a unique markets commentary service streaming real-time text chat to the online audience. Viewers can comment on the unfolding chat as it happens, and their comments are flashed onto the screens of the journalists allowing instant reaction and engagement with the audience.
At midday, the daily report on Credit Default Swaps appears, the first regular report on this rapidly emerging market, and as the afternoon progresses other specialist content includes reports on the movements of key people and positions at the main banks and listed companies.
When the day is over, around 25 posts will have been made by a busy team, and these will continue to be searchable both from Alphaville and FT.com, but at 3am the front page is cleared ready for another day to begin. Murphy's team are creating content for Alphaville throughout the day, and he's unequivocal about the experience:
"Frankly it's fantastic. Some back-office stuff can be clunky, but Alphaville is a dream to use. When you're a journalist used to an eight hour deadline and suddenly you have to deal with a fifteen second publishing cycle, the last thing you want to worry about is the kit not working. On that score we certainly have no complaints - it's exactly what we asked for"
Features for no-nonsense users
Like most blogs Alphaville offers RSS feed syndication, on the front page, categories and comments on any post. However, Alphaville supports its time-poor users with extra features designed to get users to the information they want as quickly as possible. All posts are expandable to view the whole content without clicking through. Users can log in and post comments using their existing FT.com user account, avoiding the need to register separately for Alphaville. New content is streamed to the browser automatically so there is no need to refresh. A tag cloud represents the companies whose names are making the news today, and allows instant one-click searches for related stories. It all adds up to a slick experience for users and a powerful tool for the editorial team.
Reflecting on the project and the relationship FT have with Assanka, Paul Murphy is happy to have worked with us:
"We couldn't be happier with Alphaville, or the service that we get from Assanka. It was rather nice to see an IT project delilvered on time, to budget and to spec. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending their services"
With sites like this demonstrating our credentials for producing websites on time, on budget and fit for purpose, Assanka is the ideal choice for businesses who want to take the internet seriously.