Wall Street Journal apparently poised to launch LinkedIn rival

Social networks like LinkedIn are increasingly becoming important content hubs, where people go for their daily news fix. So what do you do if you’re a massive newspaper, with most of your content hidden behind a paywall? If you’re the Wall Street Journal, you build your own social network. Obviously.

According to the Times of London, the US-based Newscorp property will soon launch a social platform designed to give “like-minded people” a place to meet online and share ideas.

That hardly makes it special and certainly doesn’t make it the next LinkedIn.

“It really is more of a forum to talk about finance,” explained Colleen Schwartz, director of corporate communications at Dow Jones, although members of the social network will be required to use their real names.

According to Social Times, the network will also complement the paper’s existing product WSJ Portfolio, which aggregates people’s various financial accounts and incorporates business headlines from Barron’s and WSJ that they can read while they monitor their investments. Since launch, the tool has reportedly synced and loaded US$12-billion worth of assets.

The new Wall Street Journal profiles will also link Dow Jones customers to each other and, according to the Times of London, will include a personal messaging system that will afford them the opportunity to discuss business in a more private setting than Twitter, for instance, allows for. It is therefore a direct competitor to Bloomberg’s offering Instant Bloomberg.

Apparently the company will try to make money from the platforms using advertising, although at this stage it’s unclear what form that advertising will take.

Image: Neon Tommy (via Flickr).