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Getting the Message: How Instant
Messaging is Setting the Table for High-Value Content |
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14 June 2004 |
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Long a tool and toy for the general public, instant
messaging (IM) is getting very serious these days in
business circles as compliance requirements and other
regulatory issues have put the clamp on retaining and
tracking IM's use throughout institutions. The good news is
that this more serious management of IM content and
security has resulted in a robust and powerful content
channel that's only begun to be exploited by by both
institutions and business content providers. While
financial firms have had the jump on IM for a while, expect
instant messaging to unfold in the months ahead as a major
opportunity for creating value for content in very personal
and focused contexts that add to the bottom line. |
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The last
leftover giveaways from this year's
Securities Industry Association Technology Conference and
Exhibition have been tucked into their cartons while those
of us who attended are awash in brochures and thoughts of how
the face of content is changing in the face of continuing and
continual technology development. While there were any number
of interesting developments at the SIA show in market data,
content management and publishing, perhaps the most interesting
development is how instant messaging (IM) has quietly become
the centerpiece of content and trading support strategies for
many major vendors and institutions. For all of the
flashing displays of realtime quotes and analytics, the old
axiom that markets are conversations has taken hold in this
strengthening medium that promises to be the focus of many
personal high-end trading relationships for some time to come.
Helping to facilitate those conversations takes on new meaning
in IM technology that now has the flexibility, security and
auditability to be a mainstay of both financial markets and
other business-oriented environments where the conveyance of
content from trusted individuals holds weight for collaborative
and transactional goals.
In finance, having online conversations
at the heart of trading services goes back to before the dawn
of the Internet, with services such as Reuters' Dealing systems
providing the ability to chat with trading partners worldwide
and Bloomberg's messaging system providing email-like
capabilities to capture securities trading information on a
peer-to-peer basis from its earliest days. Unlike these
progenitors of IM, though, today's new messaging platforms do
not require a user to wrap their messages in expensive trading
software and services - though this is often the upgrade goal
of content vendors. Instead, institutional and marketwide
ubiquity is the goal, helping a broad array of individuals and
institutions to communicate with one another in a reliable and
secure environment regardless of their relationship with
content vendors on other levels.
The important net result of this movement
is that instead of wrapping content around messaging,
increasingly instant messaging is becoming the wrapper for key
content chosen by an individual to get their point across for
specific goals. Often thought of as a safe substitute for email
or a more efficient way to carry on multi-threaded
conversations than "squawk boxes" or phone systems, IM's
ultimate impact may be as a medium that allows individuals to
publish content securely and cost effectively to highly
targeted elite audiences - without resorting to releasing that
content to vendor databases. The full impact of that capability
is beginning to be felt in financial circles - and is likely to
extend itself quickly into other industries as
rapid growth (CNET News) in enterprise-based instant
messaging takes hold. Here are a few quick takes on where and
how the full impact of IM may be felt in the months ahead:
- An improving and important content
distribution medium. With a widening infrastructure in
place to support successful messaging to and from trusted
business contacts, instant messaging holds out the
opportunity for professionals to package content from
multiple sources into messages that can help nail down ideas,
relationships and transactions. Professionally published
sources of content are likely to be an important and
increasing part of that stream - if publishers can overcome
their reluctance to allow content redistribution to be a key
factor in creating content value in business. If they don't,
they mayl catch up with the market in fairly minimal ways via
services such as
Copyright
Clearance Center and
RSIcopyright on the outside of the messaging envelope,
but miss out on one of the major content channels in business
today.
- A key component of knowledge
management. Services such as
Parlano's MindAlign have sprung up out of the financial
environment to provide multi-featured, multi-party discussion
capabilities atop secure messaging channels, a
capability that is only broadening.
AOL announced a late bid to enter the business messaging
fray last week via an alliance with conferencing provider
WebEx, a pay-as-you-go facility to enable people to combine
their already familiar AOL interface with business-grade
services to complement these channels. From whatever the
angle, IM is the center of communications capabilities around
which many of the goals of knowledge management are being
met, without resorting to prohibitively expensive software
solutions. Most importantly, it's allowing that knowledge to
take shape with input from clients, partners and suppliers
alike with similarly minimal investments.
- An important environment for
transaction-oriented content. Just as weblogs are proving
to be an increasingly important tool for publishing one's
views to a potentially infinite audience, the
closed-community environment of messaging systems encourages
people to put forth content in ways that would otherwise
discourage people from acting as an author or distributor of
original content. In finance this capability lead early on to
highly confidential information about securities transactions
being put out to select communities, who in turn could use
either messaging or other forms of communications to close a
deal. Expect this transaction-oriented packaging of content
to broaden and deepen in today's messaging environments, both
within finance and in other forms of business communications.
Being able to present content in the context in which it's
most likely to result in revenues is a key opportunity for
both commercial publishers and institutions that are trying
to make the most of their own content assets.
Transaction-oriented instant messaging for both of these
groups may be an ideal opportunity to maximize content value
at the point of its greatest relevance to very specific
audiences.
While instant messaging is no more a
"cure-all" than weblogs or any other content technology, its
acceptance as a cornerstone of trusted enterprise
communications makes it a serious candidate for content
providers of all kinds to start considering for a much broader
array of products and services than offered heretofore. Its
ability to convey information simply, and directly in a
near-realtime environment with increasingly assured delivery
and archiving capabilities maximizes the potential for content
to be noticed above the fray of less truly personal channels.
Combined with the ability to execute transactions with similar
levels of confidence, it's bound to be a clear winner for the
content industry - if they're ready to accept people using
messaging tools as their partners in content marketing. Good
luck to all of those who are already on the IM bandwagon - and
best wishes to those who are still trying to figure out where
to jump on.
-
John Blossom
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