On Thursday, November 15, in downtown New York, the FT and Muck Rack hosted a lively discussion on mobile trends in media. Rob Grimshaw (@r_g), Managing Director of FT.com, answered questions moderated by Greg Galant (@gregory), CEO of Sawhorse Media.

A virtual Twitter wall hung at the front of the room, pulling through comments and questions from the audience using the #FTmuckrack hashtag.

The 8am start didn’t seem to deter New York media and tech types from attending, and fuelled by coffee and bagels they posed their questions to Grimshaw.

Creating a digital culture and driving innovation internally were hot topics of discussion and Grimshaw had this to say: “The hardest challenge isn’t tech, but getting companies to adapt to a new way of thinking”.

The audience was keen to understand more about how the FT is trying to reach a younger demographic, to which Grimshaw replied “ Financial Times mobile readers are frequently in their late 20’s/early 30’s”.

This drove the discussion on regionalisation and Grimshaw talked about how the US leads the way in terms of FT content consumption on mobile and how it takes six months for the rest of the world to catch up.

In terms of future plans, social login, Flipboard and an API on FT.com were all mentioned by Grimshaw, as well as the need to collaborate more closely across the business to compete for readers’ attention in a crowded marketplace.

Heads down tweeting….

From left: Eileen Jacobson, Marie Griffin, Greg Galant and Natan Edelsburg.

Watch this space to hear about future tweet-ups or let us know on @FTPressOffice.