1) What differentiates the eToro platform from online trading systems offered by banks and specialized financial operators?

The eToro platform has always been primarily about giving our customers the best trading experience possible. The ethos behind eToro is focused on opening up financial trading to everyone. For that reason we are a very democratic provider of financial trading – open to traders looking to invest just a few euros just as we are open to other traders who are seeking to invest a million euro. That’s why we pioneered the use of a social trading community – OpenBook – which enables traders to communicate with and learn from each other, and that’s why we go to such great lengths to be appealing to new traders with features like unlimited free practice accounts and trading championships where even practice traders can win rewards based on their trading skill. I think this openness to new traders together with our open community of users is what really distinguishes us from other online trading platforms.

2) How does OpenBook work and how does it add to your services already offered?

OpenBook works by really connecting traders to each other and giving them the opportunity to learn from each other and share their insights into the financial trading world for mutual benefit. What OpenBook enables traders to do is to interact with each other without restrictions, so that if two traders want to co-ordinate their research in order to better exploit the trading world they can do so through OpenBook. If a traderwishes to see which traders are the most skilled across the community, OpenBook offers them that information and if they also want to copy the actual trades which this trader makes then again OpenBook gives them the ability to do that. So OpenBook is very much about freeing traders which is why it’s free to join and open to every trader whether or not they’ve already joined eToro.

3) Could you detail what technologies are behind the development of the platform, i.e. what software were used, what’s the structure of the data center (where is it located?) and what is the configuration of the global network infrastructure?

Whereas many financial trading brokers use very similar trading platforms which they buy a license to use,eToro is rather more unique. We developed the platform in-house in order to meet our requirements to be as open as possible to traders at all levels of experience. Unlike many of our competitors eToro is in essence a trading platform and community rather than a broker. We are focused on delivering the best platform and support infrastructure to our community of users which we can. Our data centers are located near to leading financial centers in Europe – Amsterdam – and the US – New Jersey – in order to provide low latency execution to our customers.

4) Since we’re talking of a "social-trading” system that allows to see the work of other investors, how's the problem of privacy been solved?

Privacy is of course something we take very seriously. Any of our traders can choose to opt out of the OpenBook in which case no information about them or their trading will be shared with the community. So far, however, almost no traders have chosen to opt out, which suggests that we are innovating in a popular direction with OpenBook. Secondly, OpenBook never records the size of transactions which traders are making across the platform which serves to protect our traders from unwanted intrusion from others. In the third place OpenBook is based upon eToro usernames and not real names which protects the fundamental anonymity of our traders. 

5) eToro was born and raised focusing on the Forex. Are you planning an extending to other areas of financial trading?

While Forex trading has always been a central focus of what we offer to our traders it has never really been exclusively what we provide. These days, in addition to trading on a wide range of Forex pairs we offer commodities trading in metals and oil as well as CFD’s trading in leading indices from the US and Europe. As one of the world’s largest and most global financial trading communities we try to continually enlarge the global focus of the assets which we offer in order to be as genuinely local as possible to traders who join us from literally every corner of the globe.

6) There are some forums in Germany that spread negative views and experiences in the use of your services (time of revenue collection, effective revenue opportunities). What are the strengths and safeguards that you want to highlight and how do you interact with your online customers, following the Web 2.0 logic, essential for you?

As you say, Web 2.0 is an essential part of communicating with our customers. We use our news blog eToro.net to keep customers updated on all the latest happenings with the company and the financial markets and invite and encourage our customers to share their perceptions and opinions whenever possible. Even more so, OpenBook is based on the active participation of our customers from Italy and the wider world – it is there interaction with one another and with the company which makes eToro what it is.

You will see a range of opinions, both negative and positive stated in regards of almost every company which offers financial trading online. When speaking strictly about eToro it’s important for me to state that while such criticism does exist the majority of it is rather antiquated and dating from the period when we just started operating and – like many startups – continued to experience technical difficulties. Today those technical problems are resolved and I’m pleased to say that the vast majority of feedback we receive is overwhelmingly positive, particularly in regards of our community features and the level of service which we provide to our Italian customers.

7) How many customers do you have in Germany, how many of them are really active and what is the annual volume of transactions you handle in Germany?

While we can’t reveal precise numbers I can say that our German customers trading on demo accounts are counted in the tens of thousands and those trading for real at any one time in the thousands. Germany is an important and respected territory for eToro and we treat it accordingly. 

8) What is the structure of eToro’s global organization and how many resources do you dedicate to the Italian customers?

Our structure is extremely global. We have local offices in Cyprus, New York, Sydney and a marketing office in Torino. As a priority country for eToro, we dedicate considerable resources to Italy. At present most of our sales and account managing division for Italy is based in Cyprus although we are planning to move it to Italy itself in 2011.

9) How do you evaluate 2010 performance and what are your goals for next year in Germany?

2010 was a successful year for eToro. This year we’ve been delighted to receive a string of awards recognizing the innovative role we’ve been playing in the market. This has also been the year in which OpenBook has launched to great acclaim, which is extremely gratifying for us. In 2010 Germany has proven to be one of our top 3 markets and we continue to see a tremendous increase in the number of traders joining us from Germany in 2010 compared with 2009. As a company we’ll continue to focus on serving Germany in 2011 which is why we’ll be expanding our local activity both online and offline. Next year Germany will, we hope, become our European focus and we’ll be offering more local media campaigns and more new ways of reaching out to everyone in Germany who is interested to experience financial trading with us.