Dump those expensive Bloomberg terminals in the trash, because there’s a brand new financial news product in town. And it’s free.

In January we wrote about SkyGrid, the $6,000 per seat/year financial news product that gives users real time updates on the stocks and sectors they are interested in. Today the service completes its transition to a free service that anyone can use and launches into private beta. You can sign up for it here. Existing users are also given invitations to the service as well, so once you are in you can get your friends on the service, too.

Like TechMeme and Google News, SkyGrid clusters related news stories based on keyword analysis, what they’re linking to, etc. That lets users see a variety of coverage from major news sources and blogs. And SkyGrid also makes a serious attempt to determine the sentiment of each article - red for negative, green for positive.

The main page, shown above, shows major financial news affecting public companies. Users can create separate pages for stocks, a portfolio or sectors that they follow as well. You can also filter by news type (major news sites, blogs, edgar filings, press releases, etc.). Finally, users can look at real time news or filter historical news back up to two weeks prior (the company says they may increase the timeline further back if users want it).

SkyGrid, located in Sunnyvale, California, has raised $13.3 million over two rounds of financing. They were founded in 2005.

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