Content Matters

A Quickening Pulse

Last year, Alacra introduced Alacra Pulse, with the initial focus on Street Pulse, a free service which tracked analyst and blogger comments on companies, culling information from traditional and alternative web-based sources.

 The initial response to Street Pulse has been positive, and we’ve been hard at work expanding the product offering.  Tomorrow, we’re officially launching PulsePro, a new version of Pulse, aimed at the professional investor and business user.

PulsePro adds three additional Pulse events to the existing Street Pulse:

• Deal Pulse spotlights M&A rumors, announced deals and “deal ideas”
• Chief Pulse captures comments by C-Suite executives
• Weak Pulse identifies distressed company events such as debt restructuring, layoffs, downgrades and potential bankruptcies

And, FOR THE NEXT 30 DAYS, we are having a FREE open access period, where anyone can use the full PulsePro at http://pulse.alacra.com.

PulsePro offers users the ability to create portfolios and profiles and to receive email and Blackberry alerts on companies, people and topics of interest. It also offers two free email newsletters.  One covers M&A Ideas and Rumors; the other covers Upgrades and Downgrades by sell-side and rating agency analyst. There are global and European versions of each, and you can sign up for them here: http://pulse.alacra.com/newsletter-signup.

Through the open access period, PulsePro subscriptions are available at a special introductory rate of $995 per year, with significant multi-user discounts via http://pulse.alacra.com/subscribe.

PulsePro drives Idea Generation and Current Awareness.

For investment bankers, professional services executives, wealth management and business development professionals, idea generation is all about providing reasons to call a prospect or customer.

From a current awareness standpoint, PulsePro ensures that users don’t miss key market-moving events on their customers and prospects.  Or, as one of our clients put it “I can’t know everything, but I never want to look like an idiot”.

PulsePro has many other potential applications. The Wall Street Journal today wrote about how PulsePro analyst sentiment feeds may be used as input for algorithmic trading.

At its core, Alacra Pulse takes a “less is more” approach to information aggregation. We’ve heard from our customers that the typical “boil the ocean” method of mining hundreds of thousands of sources just doesn’t work. So, we’ve focused our efforts on identifying just the critical information our customers want, taking a four-pronged approach:

Curation: There aren’t 100,000 blogs that matter, from a business perspective. There probably aren’t 20,000. So, the first thing we do is use Alacra editors to carefully identify the right sources. Today, Alacra Pulse includes roughly 3,000 sources, half being traditional media (NYT, WSJ, the Guardian, the Telegraph, MarketWatch and more); the other half being a hand-selected group of influential blogs. These blogs cut across a wide swath of industries but all provide breaking news and/or deep analysis and commentary. Blogs include Pharmalot, Business Insider, Green Stocks Central, Flightglobal, Mashable, and blogs from industry analyst firms like Forrester, Gartner, Yankee, NPD and more.

Event detection: in separating the signal from the noise, it’s not enough to limit the number of sources; you still need to discern impactful business events from simple mentions of a company. If I’m tracking Bank of America (BAC:NYSE), I need to know if Moody’s puts them on credit rating watch, but I don’t need to know that they open a new branch somewhere. Using state of the art semantic technology, Alacra Pulse detects and spotlights impactful, market-moving business events.

Tagging: Matching company names is a fairly trivial task for any information retrieval system. Unfortunately, relying on simple name matching isn’t good enough. It generates false positives (Apple, Inc. vs. the fruit) and misses a high percentage of mentions. Alacra leverages semantic tagging technologies, combined with our existing knowledge base, to generate superior results. In our knowledge base, we have deep information about companies. We know alternate names (e.g. Woolies = Woolworths plc; Kirk Kerkorian = Tracinda Corporation), products (iPad=Apple) along with numerous details about company location, executives, competitors and partners. Together, these allow us to tag companies at a much higher level of accuracy than off-the-shelf tools.

Editor review:  While state-of-the-art technology drives Pulse, we know that technology alone is not enough. We employ editors to review the tagged results to ensure overall quality.

I invite you to try Alacra Pulse for free through April 15 and welcome your feedback in the comments

Alacra Pulse and the new Content Aggregation

Here's my presentation as part of the Fresh Look at Content panel at today's NFAIS conference.

The panel, to be moderated by Jabin White, features Dr. Emilie Marcus of Cell Press and Dow Jones' Brigitte Ricou-Bellan.

Here's my presentation. I look forward to a fascinating discussion.

SIIA 2010 CODiE Award Winners

Last night, the Content division of the Software & Information Industry Association held its annual CODiE Awards presentation. While the CODiEs had previously been awarded in the spring (in conjunction with the SIIA Software and Education divisions), this year the event was moved forward to align with the annual Information Industry Summit.

The CODiEs are awarded in fifteen categories. There were more than 100 products nominated, by more than 65 companies.  Nominees are screened by a team of judges, who rate each product based on category-specific criteria. Finalists are named and the SIIA membership votes to select the final winners of each category.

The full list of winners is posted on the SIIA CODiE site; I'd like to note a few innovators here.

• Dow Jones Investment Banker won a CODiE in the Best Online Professional Financial Information Service category.
• The Best Video Content Aggregation Service was awarded to Reuters Insider
• HR.BLR.com was selected Best Online Government Information Service
• Collexis Reviewer Finder won for Best Solution Integrating Content into Workflow

And, without appearing too self-serving, I'd note that Alacra Pulse was awarded two CODiEs, one for Best Online Business Information Service and another for Best Online News Service. Alacra was one of only two companies to take home "matching bookends" (Dow Jones being the other).

Congratulations to all the winners.

Here are a few photos from the awards dinner.

       

Alacra, ALM Partner to Bring Alacra Pulse to Legal Market

Alacra and ALM Legal Intelligence are partnering to bring Alacra Pulse to law firms.

Financial institutions and professional service organizations have been using Alacra Pulse for idea generation and current awareness since its launch last year. The partnership with ALM will allow us to reach the legal market, where the business development needs are very similar.

The solution, co-branded as ALM Pulse, helps drive idea generation (for business development) and current awareness, allowing law firm partners to keep up-to-date on critical business events impacting their clients, prospects and peers.

ALM Pulse reads and analyzes stories from more than 3,000 traditional and alternative media sources, identifying key events such as M&A rumors, bankruptcies, comments by financial and industry analysts, law firm representation of clients and other impactful events. The results are delivered as daily alerts to users and through the ALM Pulse website.

ALM Pulse includes all the current Pulse events:

• Street Pulse (analyst comments on companies)
• Deal Pulse (M&A rumours, deals and deal ideas)
• Legal Pulse (law firm mentions, legal representation)
• Weak Pulse (bankruptcies, reorgs & restructurings)
• Chief Pulse (comments by senior corporate executives)

The ALM partnership furthers Alacra's goal of partnering with segment leaders to reach markets where we don't participate directly. This is the second Pulse partnership to-date, the first being our partnering with Fidelity to include Alacra Street Pulse in their new Stock Research Center.

For more information on ALM Pulse, visit http://pulse.law.com/info or contact almlegalintel@alm.com.

 

Alacra Pulse named SIIA CODiE Finalist in 3 Categories

The Software & Information Industry Association has just posted the finalists for the content division CODiE Awards and Alacra Pulse has been named a finalist in three categories:

• Best Social Media Aggregation Service
• Best Online Business Information Service
• Best Online News Service

The CODiE award winners will be selected according to the votes of SIIA members and will be announced at a special Information Industry Summit dinner to be held January 26, 2010. Finalists were selected by a panel of judges who carefully reviewed each nominated product.

The past year has been an exciting one for Alacra, having launched the free version of Alacra Pulse in the spring, followed by the professional version released this fall. In addition to the customers who have integrated Alacra Pulse inside the enterprise, Fidelity has featured Street Pulse in its just-released Stock Research Center. We have also partnered with American Lawyer Media to bring Pulse to the legal market.

In addition to Street PUlse (analyst and key blogger comments about companies), the Pulse platform now includes Deal PUlse (intelligence on M&A deals and rumours), Weak Pulse (distressed company events) and the just-introduced Chief Pulse, which features comments by corporate CEO, CFO, President, Division heads and other leaders.

Our clients tell us that Alacra Pulse is helping them address two distinct needs:

1. Idea generation: give me a reason to call my client or prospect; and
2. Current awareness: keep me from looking dumb in front of a client by not knowing key information

According to our clients, the differentiators between Pulse and traditional news & information services are:

• Curation: identification of the key blogs and news sites for trusted information
• Events: rather than every mention of a company, highlighting those events with business impact (M&A, credit downgrades, restructuring) and links to commentary from key opinion leaders
• Tagging: improved precision over keyword-based searches
• Human oversight to ensure maximum quality

We're currently working on a series of enhancements which will be rolled out shortly after the New Year. In the meantime, to learn more about Alacra Pulse, please contact our sales team or drop me a note.

Alacra Pulse Featured in New Fidelity Stock Research Center

Fidelity has launched a new Stock Research Center, to drive idea generation for investors.

The Stock Research Center features content from Alacra Street Pulse, along with research products from Zacks, FirstRain and Recognia.

According to Fidelity vice president Franklin Gold:

"We've heard from investors that not only do they like being able to dive deep into research to verify a trading idea, but they also want a rich variety of investing ideas from a number of sources. The institutional-grade information we are making available on our stock research platform delivers on both of those desires."

The Stock Research Center has four areas:

1. What Stocks are Moving (trends among most active stocks)
2. What You Can Search For (stock screening)
3. What the Experts are Thinking (trading idea generation)
4. What People are Talking About (track financial themes and corporate events)

The new Stock Research Center is focused on trading ideas, but the theme of idea generation is one that we're seeing in various areas including sales and business development. With the abundance of content on the web, users are no longer content to read through multiple sources hoping to find the useful nuggets. Instead they are looking to content providers to surface relevant, impactful information which they can immediately act upon.

To view Alacra Pulse on the Stock Research Center, go to the Fidelity.com site, select Research, then Stocks from the main menu and scroll down to the "Most Talked About Companies" section. The 5 most talked about companies are displayed; clicking any of the companies brings you to the latest analyst comments on that company.

Alacra Seeks Digital Content Editor

Alacra is hiring!
We're currently seeking a Digital Content Editor to lead the database editorial processes around our new Pulse platform.

Candidates should have hands-on skills with SQL and data mining and operational/data quality experience in the digital content space.

This person will be responsible for the development and implementation of strategies for the creation and management of the databases which drive the Alacra Pulse applications. The role will work closely with our product development team and will oversee the outsourced research teams responsible for editorial review, database maintenance and content sourcing.

The ideal candidate will have a deep blend of technical and analytical skills and a thorough understanding of business/finance.

This role is based out of our downtown Manhattan headquarters.

Candidates should send their CV to nyjobs-at-alacra-dot-com. Feel free to pass this along to friends or peers.

Win a Kindle, courtesy of Alacra Pulse

Twitter users: here’s a chance to win an Amazon Kindle, while learning a little bit about Alacra Street Pulse.

Alacra Street Pulse aggregates comments from traditional analysts and the alternative media to answer the question: What do key opinion leader have to say about Company X today? There’s a free, ad-supported version of Alacra Street Pulse available at http://pulse.alacra.com. A Professional version, available for license, includes advanced search capabilities, email alerting, information sharing and other features for professional users.

To enter the contest you simply need to follow @AlacraPulse on Twitter, then retweet the following message:

RT @AlacraPulse Win a Kindle! Alacra Pulse: See what opinion leaders say about your favorite companies: http://bit.ly/TContest

The contest kicks off Monday, July 27 and ends midnight August 2. Full contest details are available at http://pulse.alacra.com/contest

Alacra Pulse Adds Twitter, Social Media apps

We’ve just added two exciting new social media features to Alacra Pulse. These new services are designed to help users track and share information that is of interest to them.

 

1.  Tweet This is a customized Twitter integration. By clicking the Tweet This button, a draft “tweet” is automatically created, including a short snippet from the specific business event. The user may edit the tweet before posting to their Twitter account.

 

Tweet This has an added twist: integration with the popular StockTwits service. If you are a StockTwits participant, your tweets will automatically be assigned the “$ticker” for the company the Pulse event is describing, so your tweet will automatically flow through to StockTwits.

 

For those unfamiliar with StockTwits, it’s a Twitter-based community of more than 70,000 users, largely active traders. To join, you can simply follow @StockTwits. There’s more information on the StockTwits page.

 

2. Share This is a plugin that allows users to automatically post stories to social media applications like Facebook or LinkedIn, as well as social bookmarking applications including Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon and others. With a single click, users can post a story to any of more than fifty different social media applications

 

Alacra Pulse is gaining a strong following among users of business and financial information. The first application on the Pulse platform, Street Pulse, at http://pulse.alacra.com, is a completely free website that aggregates content from traditional and alternative media, identifying comments on companies by sell-side, industry and credit analysts, plus a carefully-selected group of reputable bloggers. Street Pulse answers the question “What do key opinion leaders have to say about Company X today?”

 

To stay on top of the latest business events, you may also follow Alacra Pulse on Twitter.

Alacra Pulse Named SIIA CODiE Award Finalist

Alacra Street Pulse has been named a finalist in the Best Content Aggregation Service category for the 2009 CODiE Awards, sponsored by the Software and Information Industry Association. The annual SIIA CODiEs are peer-awards, voted on by members of the industry association. Voting by SIIA members begins today, with the ultimate winners announced at the SIIA NetGain conference in early May.

 

The Pulse Platform, which was launched four weeks ago, combines content from traditional news sources with a group of about 1,000 hand-selected blogs. The content is then run through our proprietary semantic tagger, which extracts entities, such as companies or people, and events, such as analyst upgrades or downgrades, mergers and acquisitions, corporate bankruptcies and more.

 

Street Pulse, the first application on the Pulse Platform, aims to answer the question “what do key opinion leaders have to say…” about a given company. By aggregating comments from sell-side, credit and industry analysts, along with key bloggers, Street Pulse provides a single view into what’s being said by key opinion leaders about a company or industry.

 

Street Pulse uses a freemium business model. There’s a completely free version available at http://pulse.alacra.com. That version is supported by advertising and the sale of contextually relevant content from the Alacra Store. A professional version, available for license, provides additional functionality such as portfolios, email alerts, enhanced sharing capabilities and advanced search.

 

In the coming weeks, Alacra will be introducing additional applications on the Pulse Platform, including Deal Pulse (M&A events), Legal Pulse (law firm mentions in the news) and Weak Pulse (events for distressed companies). As with Street Pulse, each of these will have a free and a professional version.

 

Alacra always gets its best ideas from our customers. I welcome you to use Street Pulse and send us your feedback.