Apparently the new LexisNexis AlaCarte service has had some glitches as of late. From the email received today:

"After a brief hiatus to enhance site security and to build a solid foundation for upcoming growth in site traffic, LexisNexis AlaCarte! is once again serving premium news, business, and legal information for hungry information seekers." They're offering a limited-time 2 for 1 deal to recommit their users. "Upcoming growth" is presumably their upcoming contributions to the Yahoo! subscription Beta, so watch this unfolding over the next few weeks in new spaces.

It's interesting to see that these new interfaces from LexisNexis and Factiva are moving rather slowly and incrementally into the world of online access, trying to maintain service quality and corporate levels of security and content maintenance in an environment that's much more open and scaled to mass media audiences and expectations. It's not that easy to serve two masters, both online media channels preferred by small to medium businesses and the corporate content fortresses of major institutions. It's about more than just bits and bytes, it's culture as well. Somehow this 2 for 1 offer sounds like a recognition that LexisNexis is still feeling its way through being in the media space and needs to make amends for a good first try that didn't quite take into account just how open an open Web can be. Perhaps those pony tailed folks will be making a comeback after all...