The Finextra Community site was launched with little fanfare to a small coterie of beta users back in February this year. In opening the community we were hoping to create a forum for interaction with our global user base, and create a logical series of private and public spaces on the Web where fintech professionals could congregate, make connections, join special interest groups and exchange views with their peers across the globe. 

The live launch in August was deliberately low-key, reflecting our view that the Community space should be an organic, largely self-policing network best left to develop at its own pace. Finextra has a light-touch role, acting as the gatekeeper to the site – which remains an exclusive network open only to bona-fide fintech professionals - and as an independent mediator.

So, how are we doing? Well, community membership is currently nudging towards 700, with new members arriving at a rate of 100 per month. Since the beta launch in February, the Community has generated some 800 blog posts and over half-a-million page views. That contrasts with the global Finextra subscriber base of 25,000 fintech professionals worldwide, and the close-on 3 million page views from 80,000 unique visitors per month generated by the public Finextra Research newswire.

Still, it's not a bad start for a niche interest social network operating for much of the year in stealth mode. And as the global Finextra member stats demonstrate, there's plenty of potential for Community growth.

But statistics only tell one part of the story. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the amount of background activity on the site, the variety of opinions expressed and the level of comment and debate generated by Community members.

Personally, I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone in the global Finextra network for your valuable contributions and feedback over the course of the year.

As for the future, we’re currently working on a major overhaul of the look and feel of the site and have some ambitious plans for elevating the interactive Community experience for the benefit of all members. So stay tuned, it promises to be an eventful 2008.