Content Matters

For various reasons, much of my focus tends to be in the area of business information.  But while the corporate and financial markets often drive innovation in the business info segment, there is quite a bit of innovation in the STM market as well.

Recently, a lot of that innovation seems to be coming from the team at scientific journal Nature.  Nature is part of the Nature Publishing Group (“NPG”), a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.  While many of the companies profiled on this blog are early stage, Nature dates back to 1869.  With 400 employees, NPG publishes sixteen journals and four clinical practice titles.

Recently, the New Technology Team at NPG launched Connotea, a social bookmarking site for the scientific community.  Connotea is loosely based on del.icio.us, though they have integrated functionality specific to the scientific community.  For example, bibliographic information from a number of content sources (Nature, Pubmed, Science, Amazon and others) is automatically fetched when these pages are saved to the site.  Connotea also supports the RIS file format, favored by many information professionals, so that users can upload entire collections of references.

Connotea also includes a wiki-based set of Community Pages, which allow users to write and edit content about the Connotea service.  I first found out about Connotea a few weeks ago, when I noticed a number of visitors to Content Matters coming from a link on the Connotea site (in response to a post I did on the Nature vs. Britannica “feud”).

But, Connotea is hardly the only forward-thinking solution from Nature.  They have been early adopters of RSS and podcasting, and have even launched a mashup of Avian flu reports with Google Earth.  A number of Nature writers and management have blogs, as does even the CEO of parent company Macmillan.

Nature has also taken some steps towards support of the Open Access movement.  For those unfamiliar with Open Access, there has been a major movement to get scientific journals to allow their writers to submit their manuscripts to public archives.  Since much of the scientific research done today leverages public funding, the OA community argues that the resulting scientific findings should be shared with the wider scientific community.  Public Library of Science, another of the “50 Content Companies that Matter” has been a leader in this space.  While Nature has not fully embraced OA (it has proposed authors only release their content following a six-month embargo), they have been more supportive of it than many of their peer journal publishers.

In a market where a few large companies control access to much of the critical information, Nature is a shining star for their flexibility, their willingness to test new technologies and their efforts to keep the “community” in scientific community.  Nature and NPG are clearly one of the 50 Content Companies that Matter.

As RSS feeds proliferate, it becomes more and more difficult to keep up with critical blogs and news feeds.  While mainstream tools like my.yahoo will probably become the dominant platform for reading RSS in the near-term, there are a number of more innovative and interesting viewers out there.

One of the more compelling offerings is Netvibes.

Netvibes is an ajax-based RSS home page.  At first glance, it doesn’t look that different than other portals.  Once you begin to use it, though, you can see how Netvibes has created a powerful and flexible interface that it simple to use.

Users can drag and drop content panels to any spot on the page.  Each panel can be customized with a click, changing the color or number of posts to include.  In addition to text-based feeds, you can point to image feeds such as flickr, a websearch box or links to any other site such as delicious.

As the site has been developed using Ajax, all of this customization can be done without redrawing the full page. 

What’s the impact for publishers?
RSS will soon be changing the content delivery game in a big way.  If you haven’t begun developing your RSS strategy, the clock is ticking.  RSS will be at the heart of Microsoft’s new IE7 and Windows Vista.  The ubiquitous orange feed icon will be prominent in the applications, both of which will deploy a common feeds list and a feeds API.

What this means is that the user experience will change.  With feeds, the publisher will no longer be in full control of how their content is being consumed.  Users may use a simple interface, like my.yahoo, to browse articles or they may wish to configure their own custom interface through tools like Netvibes.  Users may prefer online-only readers such as Netvibes, existing portals such as my.yahoo, or may prefer to read their content offline using apps like Feedreader.  Solutions providers may mash your feed with other content, developing applications that you'd never considered.

Publishers will soon have to make decisions about what content they will include in their feeds and whether they want those feeds to be easily syndicated by others.  Those decisions will have critical branding implications.  More importantly, content providers will have to decide whether to make their feeds customer-centric or advertiser-centric.  Today, many publishers (NY Times, WSJ Online) limit their RSS feed to just a headline or a few words from an article, forcing the reader to click through to the publisher’s website for authentication or to drive advertising page views.  But this is not a very customer-friendly experience and may send your readers looking for similar content elsewhere. 

In the meantime, if you aren’t using RSS yet, take a few moments to configure Netvibes and make it your browser Start page, so you can begin to learn how RSS may impact your 2006-2007 strategy.

One of the key characteristics of “Web 2.0” is social software, used to bring together and facilitate community interaction. 

This week, I add one of the emerging leaders in social software, enterprise wiki provider SocialText, to my list of Emerging Content Technologies.  SocialText develops and hosts wikis for companies for both internal and external use.  Wikis are rapidly beginning to replace intranets and portals for managing the communications around projects.

Unlike earlier knowledge management tools, wikis can rapidly increase productivity.  According to SocialText CEO Ross Mayfield, “a typical wiki can eliminate 30% of the email around a project.” 

One key to the success of SocialText, and wikis in general, is their decentralized structure.  Rather than a centralized, IT-focused solution, a SocialText wiki can be set up by non-technical staff in a short time.  Typical projects involve a handful of initial users, then once a critical mass of information is developed they expand to a wider audience.  By sharing control with their user community, sponsors of wikis can drive participation and a feeling of ownership.

As a Web 2.0 company, SocialText is committed to an open environment.  They will soon release an Open Source version and are involved in various open source initiatives today.

What’s the opportunity for publishers?
According to Elsevier Vice Chair Y.S. Chi, as content becomes commoditized, “the role of the publisher is beginning to shift from creator of content to manager of markets”.  Publishers have the ability to leverage their brand to develop communities focused around a given subject area.  Using wiki technology to cultivate a strong user community can provide you with a platform to sell various solutions to that market.  The difficult part for publishers will be ceding the absolute control that publishers are accustomed to.  But for those who do, the rewards may be significant.

Email performance management provider Return Path has just launched a new service called Sender Score Reputation Monitor.  Return Path's focus is on helping companies ensure deliverability of their email to customers and subscribers. 

Return Path has positioned Sender Score as similar to a Credit Score - it's a quantitative measure of a sender's reputation for legitimacy.  This reputation data can be used by ISP's to drive email blocking and filtering.  Companies with a "good" Sender Score should see their emails delivered successfully to users, while those with bad scores could be suppressed.

Email spam continues to be a large problem.  Most of the proposed solutions (from charging emailers to have their mail delivered to requiring senders to authenticate each addressee) are fraught with problems.  Return Path's quantitative approach seems well-thought through and balances the needs of both senders and recipients.

For more information on Sender Score, take a look at Fred Wilson's post.

Google has unveiled Google Calendar (as a beta of course).
It's an ajax-based calendar, allowing users to share schedules with others.  More importantly, Google has developed this as a platform, so look to see some interesting timeline-based mashups in the near future.  Content providers with date-specific material should explore mashing it up with the Google Calendar.

The past few days at the Buying and Selling eContent conference were a mix of good and bad. 

BSEC, known for good networking and an inconsistent program, lived up to its reputation.  The turnout was strong and the climate encouraged networking.  The program itself was mixed, with a few strong speakers and panels combined with some that just didn’t make much sense or big-name speakers like Esther Dyson, who either didn't know the market or simply was disinterested.

The audience, too, was mixed.  Like the speakers, there were a handful of attendees who seemed closely attuned to the convergence of technology and content, and were actually putting to use some of the new tools and approaches.  On the other end of the spectrum, there were some speakers and attendees who seemed to have ignored all the advances of the past three to four years.  The majority of the attendees were somewhere in the middle.  The good news is that, unlike past years, the absolute fear of Google seemed to be diminishing.  Instead of “will Google take away my business”, they were asking “how do I play well with Google” and “what happens if Google doesn’t play nicely with me”?

For most, Tim O’Reilly’s keynote was the high point of the program.  Unlike analysts and pundits, O’Reilly is one of the few visionaries in this industry who has put his concepts into practice.  Other speakers from the vendor community, such as Ross Mayfield at SocialText and R.J. Pittman of Groxis, clearly were showing Web 2.0 capabilities, but their showcase clients were mostly in the consumer not b2b community.

The second day keynoter, Y.S. Chi, Vice Chair at Elsevier, showed there is hope for this industry.  While the model of publisher that he described, serving as market maker (“to know and honor customer needs”) might not sound earth shattering, it’s a message that you’d never have heard from a company like Elsevier in the past.  It’s clear that Y.S.’s vision for Elsevier is for a company attuned to its customer needs and one that comprehends that it needs to add value to its content, rather than simply hide it behind an exclusive wall. 

The final panel of the conference was a wrap-up, with a mix of panelists including Rafat Ali, Michele Manafy, David Seuss, Marydee Ojala and others.  Rafat seemed disappointed by what he’d heard during the two-day conference.  As compared to the media markets he normally follows, this segment remains risk-averse and unaware.  David Seuss attempted to provoke controversy, suggesting that all the attention on Google made no sense, and that intertwining premium content with free Google results would simply devalue the premium content.  While David was being intentionally provocative, his statements could have begun an interesting debate had there been more than 60-70 attendees left at that time.  In my opinion, premium content providers must have a Google strategy, but that strategy should be more than simply good SEO and SEM.  We all need to work well with Google (Yahoo and MSN as well), to gain exposure beyond those core users who know us.  At the same time, premium content providers need to add greater value through metadata, tools, information presentation and analysis.

In closing, BSEC is a good conference, but it could be a great one.  The venue draws a strong group of attendees, so it’s a very good business development and networking opportunity.  There are some terrific speakers and panelists, but the inconsistency of the program is frustrating.  I think that there are three things that could be done to improve next year’s conference:
1. Set a few themes up front, then make sure that those themes run through all the panels
2. Vet the speakers more closely to make sure that their experiences are relevant to those themes.  The bigger names don’t always make for the best panelists.
3. Provide some introductory material to level-set the audience.  Some of the questions that came up (“what’s the long tail”?) could have been addressed early on, so that everyone was on the same page.

Were you at BSEC?  What do you think?  Please click Comments to add your thoughts or
For further thoughts on BSEC, check the following blogs:

John Blossom’s live blogging
David Scott’s WebInkNow
Steve Goldstein’s AlacraBlog
Shannon Holman’s If You See Something, Say Something
PaidContent
Larry Schwartz at Newstex
Ross Mayfield’s weblog
Dale Wolf’s Context Rules Marketing

Jigsaw, an innovator in CRM and lead identification, and one of our 50 Content Companies that Matter, has raised $12m in venture capital.
Austin Ventures led the round, along with prior investors Norwest Capital and El Dorado Ventures.

Despite the fact that TechCrunch believes Jigsaw to be one of the most evil companies in the world, IMO their model is nothing but a modern day version of the way that directory publishers have compiled information for years.

I am sensitive to Michael Arrington's belief that users should be able to opt-out of the Jigsaw database, but having spent many years in the compiled information business think he's overhyping the risk. 

Jigsaw is hardly giving away personal information - it's not home addresses, names of children or anything else that might lead to evil use.  It's simply allowing users to upload business contact information for business professionals.  If you've ever subscribed to a controlled circulation magazine, you've already exposed yourself to worse.

With its low cost base, it will be interesting to see how Jigsaw uses the funds for business development.

After lunch, Jeff Cutler of Answers.com led an interesting panel bringing together three leaders from the search market. Jim Gerber, Director of Content Partnerships at Google, Cliff Hawk, biz dev head for Microsoft Windows Live and Ryan Massie who heads news search and local initiatives at Ask.com were together on stage.

It was an interesting discussion as these three competitors were also faced with defending their business models to an audience of skeptical publishers.

Jim Gerber provided an overview of four related businesses within Google – Google News, Google Scholar, Google Video and Google Book Search. He stressed how in all four models the content owner controls pricing and access.

Cliff Hawk walked through the new organizational structure at Microsoft, with the new Windows Live. According to Cliff, Windows Live is about tools, utilities and web services, user choice and selection and customization of content. Windows Live, which will leverage many of the tools of MSN, will incorporate RSS, gadgets, mail and messenger. According to Cliff, the imminent launch of Microsoft’s Ad Center Ads (the Microsoft version of AdWords), may provide some opportunities for early adopters to buy keywords while auction prices are low.

Ryan Massie, of Ask, provided a brief history of Ask.com and how they finally had to kill off Jeeves the Butler, as users didn’t perceive that Ask was a true search engine.

A clear theme throughout the discussion was that these search engines could threaten traditional content aggregators. As more and more premium content is exposed through the search engines, content aggregators will have to prove that they are adding value. Most aggregators have begun to move up the value chain, through development of workflow-based applications, through the provision of ancillary applications that help corporations manage their content purchasing or by adding significant metadata to improve the user experience. Those who view themselves as simply a pipe may find it harder and harder to hang on.

BSEC Panel: The Quest to Know Your Customers

Depending upon how you look at it, Hal Espo had either the easiest or most difficult moderator role of the conference.
The last panel before lunch included three speakers, each with a strong combination of personality and insights.  John Blossom began the levity with the comment that "It's good to be in the position that I can't ask any questions".

John Blossom led off with a summary of a custom study that Shore had recently performed for Hoovers, looking at purchasing patterns of premium business information.   The study showed that, even for large companies, a significant amount of content is being purchased at the department and workgroup level.  In fact, 49% of purchases at large organizations were made via credit card. 
The study asked which types of content were most frequently used; web, news and other free content came out on top.  When the question was flipped to ask which were the most important sources of business information, market research and subscription databases were at the top.
John’s takeaways from the study are that there remains a strong demand for premium business information, that ease of use and access is key, and that publishers must sell to individuals, departments and institutions.

Lou Celi, of the Economist Intelligence Unit, walked us through a quick history of electronic content at the EIU.  He broke it into three phases:
During the 1980’s, it was selling “old wine in new bottles”, repackaging existing Economist content for delivery through LexisNexis, Dialog, MAID and others.
In the mid-90’s, that changed to “new wine in new bottles”, where content was developed specifically for the e-user.
More recently, Lou indicates that the business had moved “outside the bottle”, where they are a full e-business, integrating content directly within customer portals and applications, doing custom research and putting on conferences.  It has changed their entire business model.  While they still sell subscriptions and pay-per-view documents, they also offer flexible enterprise licensing as well as sponsorship for “thought leadership” events.

The morning at BSEC continued with a 2-part panel focused on models in the content industry.

The first panel, “the Subscription Dilemma” included Jonathan Lewin of eMeta, Andrea Broadbent of McGraw Hill and Adam Bernacki of Leadership Directories, focusing on paid content models.  Andrea described how they converted  ENR.com from a free site to a paid site, leveraging critical construction economic data as the “crown jewels” of the site.  They have converted 71,000 paid subs. 

Adam spoke of the differences between demand-publishing at D&B and selling canned content such as that of a directory publisher like Leadership Directories and how a balance can reach audiences outside of the core customer base.  While transactional (pay-per-view) sales are less than 1% of LDI’s revenues today, Adam sees that as a strong growth opportunity.

The second part of the panel was focused on the role of SEO and SEM for premium content providers.  The panel consisted of Rafael Cosentino of Congoo, Matt Hong of Thomson Gale, Pam Springer of ECNext and David Scott of Freshspot Marketing.

Rafael led off with a discussion of how premium content providers may be able to help themselves by developing co-branded networks.  During his previous experience at Healthology, Rafael developed numerous co-branded networks.  As a result, when he did a Yahoo search on “cardio health”, 90% of the results on the first page came from Healthology and its partners.  Rafael walked through a list of top tips for successful co-branded networks.  He also suggested that premium content providers could take a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach, where premium content providers, by linking to one another, could improve each other’s traffics, giving all of them stronger positioning vis-à-vis open web content.

David Scott provided four key observations for those involved in developing search engine strategies:
1. First, he indicated how search is remarkable in that it’s the only form of marketing that does not require interruption of the user from what they are doing.  You reach people at the exact moment they are seeking you.
2. Good search engine strategies look for sites that aggregate audiences.  As an example, he indicated how MarketingSherpa, with its focused audience, generates much higher quality leads than general search like Google.
3. Don’t be egotistical.  Understand your buyers first, then develop SEO/SEM programs based upon what they are looking for.  Too many publishers select keywords based upon what they have to offer, not what their customers are looking for.
4. Pay very close attention to the landing pages that you drive people to.  It’s amazing how many companies invest tremendous budgets on SEM, then drive that traffic to their home page or a weakly designed landing page.