Oanda discontinues social networking platform

Online trading company Oanda has announced the discontinuation of the fxUnity platform, which integrated social networking and trading, following concerns over risk taking.

fxUnity was launched in April last year to enable traders on the Oanda trading platform to interact and share ideas, with the ability to replicate trading strategies.

The firm said in a statement: "As a company of innovators, Oanda has never shied away from experimenting with product ideas. Our fxUnity platform was both an experiment and a great learning experience for us as an organisation. But we've also been able to validate HTML5 as a technology, and we're putting that new knowledge to good use as we continuously work to improve our platform."

It said that although it has discontinued fxUnity, it remains actively engaged in social forex through partnerships including that with Coronado financial communications company StockTwits.

"We've been closely monitoring social trading trends and the various platforms out there. It's raised a few red flags for us, given our commitment to trader education and support. Creating a game-like experience where traders copy the trades of others can be fun, but it's not necessarily helpful in learning to become a successful trader. With no guarantees that the traders you copy actually know what they're doing, the dynamic becomes one of the blind leading the blind. This is something we want to avoid," it said.

The company added that it is evaluating other ways to facilitate trader education, and looking closely at partners that have a trader mentorship philosophy rather than a "trading can be fun and easy!" approach, the statement concluded.