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| Tuesday, February 28, 2006 |
 The new Ask.com is pretty killer. The target for this Jeeves-less rebirth of the venerable search portal is clearly Google, but now o so much more from a feature and content perspective in many ways. Type in a company name into the Web search box and not only do you get darn good search results but in some instances premium corporate profile's from ECNext's Goliath premium content service in sponsored search results up top. For others like General Motors the results include some pretty interesting options: "narrow your search" categories (History of General Motors, General Motor Engines,General Motors Timeline,General Motors Corporation Job Vacancies, etc.), broaden your search (competitors) and related names. It may lack some of the sparkle of Factiva's 2.0 beta, but it's highly usable content contextualization for business-oriented searchers. The search results themselves for Web content are very acceptable in a first pass, both in terms of search quality and embedded features. A nice little plus is a binocular icon on many results that allows you to pop up an image of a page when you cursor over it before you waste a click to look at the actual page. Natural language searches also return pretty good results. Meanwhile, back at the main search page there's of course the single-box Web search form but also a nicely designed menu of alternative searches through images, news, maps, weblogs, encyclopedias, desktop, mobile content, movies and so on. Click on any of these options and the search form changes automatically to the needs of that search, with examples of searches and search results expected popping up at the same time beneath the search zone. It's like having a whole reference set at your fingertips without having to click over to other pages to get something done. News search results seem to favor certain sources such as AFX rather heavily [UPDATE: sometimes WAY too heavily] but otherwise provide good and sometimes excellent selections. While Google News still works well on many topics, this is a news search that's at least a match in many ways and clearly superior to either Yahoo's or MSN News. Easy-to-subscribe RSS links for specific news streams makes it easy to get key topics onto a desktop. I was prepared to be quite underwhelmed by this offering based on earlier efforts by the Ask team but Barry Diller has clearly invested a ton in making a highly focused reference product that can service a broad array of audiences with tools that place content sources in very valuable contexts. Google features have been slavishly copied in some instances (don't argue with success) but other key Ask strengths are retained and greatly enhanced by one of the most intelligently designed search interfaces on the open Web. Best of all the search results don't seem to disappoint in any major ways that I've encountered so far. Ask.com had fallen off of my radar based on earlier gut checks on quality: now it's in my bookmarks. Let the competition to do one better than this effort begin.
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:33 PM |
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I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Anne Holland for MarketingSherpa today, focusing on what needs to happen for enterprise and media business content producers in the near term to build successful strategies. We'll post a link when she's done with the piece, but in the process of being interviewed I did a dumb thing - I actually had the temerity to say that email was dying as a communications medium. Marketing guru that Anne is, she quickly snapped a towel across my virtual butt through the phone and reminded me of the oodles of research that shows that email is alive and growing at tremendous rates as a marketing medium. Touche, Anne. Even Shore's own research shows that the most popular content technology tool for people on a daily basis remains the email inbox, and we oftentimes recommend to clients to focus on email as a key delivery channel. Guttenberg's invention was hardly perfect but we've gotten a few centuries of use out of it; email is going to be with us for a long time as well. But I do believe that we're at the beginning of an era in which more effective personal communications tools for content are both necessary and emerging. The incorporation of elements from the Groove collaborative desktop into Microsoft Office 12 and the increasing popularity of collaborative online content services point towards ways of sharing information with trusted peers that preclude the need to push and pull content through email channels. Feeds from weblogs in RSS and Atom formats to desktops and mobile devices allow people to tune into and tune out messages from trusted sources at will, a fact that frustrates some marketeers but that quietly has allowed content to reach its destination unmolested by firewalls, spam filters and other agents of non-delivery with increasingly sophisticated tracking tools. Google's Gmail service and similar services from other portal providers use the email ID as a unique ID to leverage a broadening array of communications services. So yes, email is growing, but I don't know that this means that it will continue to thrive in its current form. It's poorly adapted to a world in which people are using multiple devices to manage similar content services simultaneously. Instead over the next few years we're going to see a new breed of communications services keyed by email addresses initially but using altogether different communications methods to sync up publishers and audiences. Emerging communications methods and services are being driven more by peer communications than hub-and-spoke communications, a factor that will place a higher premium on being a member of a social community than sheer firepower from a central source for getting a marketing message out. The primitive "forward" function of email will be transformed into a simpler metaphor that allows content to appear on a user's desktop or other device in a more useful and organized context than the inboxes that we deal with today, even as peers are alerted to new valuable content in a far more effective manner that accounts for its value in the eyes of a specific community in much the same way that many search engine results take into account content's popularity. Services such as Google Desktop that merge emails, Web, desktop and enterprise sources are already knocking at the door of this value proposition: why have an inbox here and a search engine there when you can have one content interface that delivers the most valuable content in one place? I am sure that this all sounds far too futuristic for its own good to many, but looking carefully at the content industry it's clear that many of these phenomena are already taking shape. We're at the very early stages of developing collaborative publishing services, one in which most publishers will assume that it's fair game to milk the email cow much as print was milked long after it was clear that new channels needed to be nurtured. The next two to three years are going to require a lot of thinking about how you are going to adapt from an email-centric world to a peer messaging world that may look superficially like email in many ways but has far more sophisticated services and options to consider for publishers. In the meantime, get out the bucket and milk the email cow, to be sure, but keep your eyes open for the emerging alternatives.
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:00 PM |
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It's not a whole new look, but we thought that we'd incorporate some of the changes that we have planned for ContentBlogger now rather than later. We hope that the new look is pleasing to you. If you have further feedback on what you'd like to see in ContentBlogger please drop us a line or comment on this entry.
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By John Blossom - posted at 9:21 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:11 AM |
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| Monday, February 27, 2006 |
As the call for more "rich data" in online business publications comes to the fore, many publishers are left wondering how they will be able to transform their businesses into operations that can provide business content solutions instead of just text, graphics and ads. This daunting proposition becomes more formidable yet when one realizes how publishers who have embraced rich data aggressively are penetrating key accounts at the enterprise level as well as through their media properties. But despair not, o business publisher, there are many different ways to play the rich media game. Read on to find some that might be right for you. Click here to read the full News Analysis
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By John Blossom - posted at 4:38 PM |
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Want to catch up on last week's headlines? Try our weekly categorized summary with imbedded commentary on the latest trends. Click here to view last week's headlines in review
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By John Blossom - posted at 2:55 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 9:15 AM |
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| Friday, February 24, 2006 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 9:28 AM |
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| Thursday, February 23, 2006 |
The Wall Street Journal reports on the strong margin improvements but weak forecast for Reuters, which prompted a big dump of the stock in the markets, a market move reflecting impatience with the pace of promised improvements. But the markets seem to be ignoring the changing tenor of the core Reuters financial content business. With today's announcement of Citigroup signing on for a global contract to implement key content and infrastructure from the Reuters Core Plus kit Reuters has cemented a key account in the investment banking community that will be a strong reference point for other implementers. By comparison long-time rival Bloomberg is scrambling to come up with a cohesive implementation strategy that can keep the best of its desktop presence while trying to accommodate deepening client demands for effective integration. Thomson Financial has built infrastructure that is likely to build them into a significant rival to Reuters over time, but still picks at the sides of the investment bank markets whilst building out from its retail-oriented ILX core. So while the numbers may not look rosy for 2006, Reuters has established a good position from which to fend off key challenges and to make further inroads into Bloomberg growth. None of this seems to translate into huge growth for any of these companies short-term, unfortunately. Financial markets are mired in a low growth mode while many investors plow their money into real estate or other tangible assets. In the meantime financial content has changed fundamentally in many ways as a marketplace. We've gone from a "sweet spot" market where most of the money was made off of general-purpose terminal and feed products to a "barbell" market where most of the money is made off of highly automated services on one end and highly sophisticated desktop services for an elite few on the other end. Even as financial markets recover it's not likely that much of the fundamental shape of the market will change: we'll see many fewer trading positions being added as conditions improve as global electronic markets keep trading much more efficient. It's going to take some deep thinking in financial content vendor circles to come up with products and services that can out-shine the ever-growing capabilities of their clients to manage their own content value propositions in-house. Some of this will be accomplished by taking a fresh look at how to integrate media markets with financial markets. In the meantime Reuters is making unglamorous but steady progress towards a strengthening market position.
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:27 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:22 PM |
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There were few new details coming out in today's Factiva telecon. It was mostly an introduction of interim Factiva CEO Claude Green, an ex-Reuter hand who will guide Factiva's existing initiatives and help to focus Factiva on sales and financial efficiencies given his background. Clare has put the pieces together, now it's up to Claude to make them deliver for the Dow Jones/Reuters joint ownership. Little will change in the Factiva universe short-term, but it will be interesting to see what Clare can do with the whole of Dow Jones Enterprise Media. This arm of DJ includes DJ Newswires, conferences, newsletters, indexes, licensing and the Factiva unit. So Clare's core mission is - yet again - to figure out how to blend in these disparate pieces into a whole. Clare did not indicate that there was any eminent plan to integrate consumer efforts in any new way, but it's day one and with so many changes on the consumer side of Dow Jones as well we'll see what happens. With Clare's focus on search as a driver of content value I stand by my original comments about "Yahoo! for business" being the ultimate DJEM goal. In many ways Clare's challenges parallel those of Thomson's several years ago, when they had disparate enterprise and media products with little cohesion requiring integration into a client-focused whole. While the DJEM set of products is more limited and fragmented than Thomson's full kit a few years ago, in many ways the challenges are the same: simplify and reduce the cost of infrastructure, create a more cohesive brand and a delivery mechanism and marketing approach that are more client-centric than product-centric. One huge advantage that Dow Jones has at this time compared to Thomson in beginning these intiatives is that they retain and continue to grow ad-based revenues alongside enterprise subscription revenues. Thomson jettisoned its print-based ad properties a few years ago to concentrate on building a more cohesive enterprise business, which has paid off in some ways but now lacks the media content to drive margins as the ad business begins to thrive in electronic channels. So being attached to a "consumer" media business that is reinventing itself in very powerful ways will be a huge plus for DJEM. Clare will have her hands full for a few months establishing her creds at a new level of the Dow Jones organization, but with Rich Zannino committed to being "hands on" in moving Dow Jones' strengths into a 21st century content market, she has been given license to prove that her broad vision of the possibilities for business content in today's enterprise markets can unfold more fully. That may prove to be tough to do with some of the products under the DJEM umbrella, but one suspects that with acquisitions and careful planning this is just the very beginning of a very different tune being played by Dow Jones.
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:08 AM |
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If you get a chance take twenty minutes to listen to paidContent.org's excellent Skype interview with Rich Zannino in which he outlines the consumer side of Dow Jones' reorg, which is a window into their overall thinking. The key factor is the pulling together of the various print and online franchises (WSJ, MarketWatch, Barron's) and operations under one organization that will use the various franchises as outlets for their core content creation capabilities. MarketWatch content will make its way onto WSJ.com, online content will makes its way into the WSJ print edition, and so on within the next few months. This brings Dow Jones operations in a more close alignment with other media companies that are learning to repurpose content through multiple franchises and begins to leverage MarketWatch capabilities in more premium channels instead of through low-value syndication channels. Rich points out that MarketWatch has become more profitable with less ad inventory and less traffic after deciding to forego renewal of a syndication deal. On the financial side DJ has come up with a formula for reporting that allocates incremental costs (as opposed to fixed costs) for driving online content to the incremental revenues. Rich points out that reporting follows the best way of running the business, but it's significant that the measurements have been irrevocably shifted to a content company mix rather than a print-plus-online mix. Notably Gordon Crovitz and Clare Hart report into Rich on a peer basis and Rich sees no need for a COO to keep him away from these crucial changes. It looks like DJ shareholders are on the road to a renewed organization that will be much better aligned for profitable and growing operations. Tune in the MP3 audio for this interview here.
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By John Blossom - posted at 9:27 AM |
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| Wednesday, February 22, 2006 |
I just walked into the office a few minutes ago and heard about the announcement that Factiva CEO Clare Hart is moving up in the Dow Jones world. Per the press release she is now a Dow Jones EVP and becomes President of an entity called Dow Jones Enterprise Media. Claude Green, currently Deputy CEO, will become Interim CEO, while Clare now becomes chair of Factiva's board, formerly Gordon Crovitz' position in the Factiva structure. I will be learning more about this tomorrow, but a few just-in-the-door observations: - While Factiva has not performed astoundingly well financially, there's no doubt that Clare carved a new and financially viable entity out of some very fragmented pieces and drew together disparate cultures into a much more powerful whole and energized what were two relatively sleepy products into a cohesive whole that has strong brand identity. These are skills that are about to be put to a greater test. - The label "Dow Jones Enterprise Media" is a very telling label, one that I am sure that we're going to be hearing a lot of buzz (and some hype) about in the weeks ahead. Clearly the core of the Dow Jones market is enterprise based, either taking their feeds institutionally or Wall Street Journal-family products individually. The move in enterprises towards individuals being empowered as content purchasers for solutions larger than a newspaper subscription creates a great opportunity for a vendor such as Dow Jones with two great brands that resonate in the corporate space strongly to create an entity that includes WSJ and other media components and Factiva's increasingly sophisticated infrastructure. This will create a sum of the parts that's definitely greater than the whole. Think of it as Yahoo! for business, coming to a portal, Web service or feed near you. - The "Interim CEO" label for Claude Green is the key teller on this. Integrating DJ and Factiva cultures is going to be in some ways more tricky than integrating the old Dow Jones Interactive crew and the former Reuters Business Briefing team. At least in that instance Clare was dealing with products that had similar market objective. Adapting a media company to the needs of technology-intense corporations is no easy task, as publishers focusing on rich data will be quick to tell you. But clearly the receptivity for a variety of content monetization models behind the firewall is increasing, including the opportunities for ad-supported content and other contextual monetization schemes. So merging the media business on some level with Factiva's largely subscription-based database business at this time makes eminent sense. Having an Interim CEO indicates that Clare will be working full-time on this cultural integration while Claude focuses on ensuring that Factiva's wide plate of initiatives remain in motion. I'll update on this tomorrow, but my guess is that this is the outlines of the story in general. Exciting times.
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By John Blossom - posted at 5:46 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 4:36 PM |
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| Tuesday, February 21, 2006 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 3:10 PM |
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The lead generation marketing techniques of TechTarget grew up through servicing business technology buyers who knew how to take full advantage of their highly targeted online publications. Six years after their founding it adds up to a highly profitable USD 70 million business that now is moving into a broader array of services. As it does so TechTarget looks more like a business development partner that is capable of managing business development efforts throughout the sales cycle. It's a formula that can be highly profitable but not all business publishers are going to be able to replicate it easily for their own sectors. Click here to read the full News Analysis
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:58 AM |
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| Monday, February 20, 2006 |
Reed Elsevier(RE) reported their year-end 2005 results on Thursday; Thomson the previous Thursday. Both companies have four divisions, three of which parallel each other (Legal/Regulatory, STM, and Education). They differ in that Thomson has a financial division, and RE has a business publishing division. The divergent strategies of these two publishing giants can be illustrated by comparing the two divisions that do not overlap, among other things. Both companies recognize the need to transform their businesses from their original print publishing businesses to digital content providers and that a critical element of the transformation depends on providing content in the formats and venues that fit with the users' work processes. Delivering on this goal requires internal technical investment to transform legacy production systems, as well as investment into understanding the core applications of the users who ultimately pay for the information provided by the publishers. Both companies are following these basic objectives; however, they differ in their approach in a few key respects. Thomson is far more focused on developing a platform that they hope users will adopt as their primary resource for external reference information. By me |
