Content Matters

Content Industry consultants Outsell have released the 2007 edition of Information Industry Outlook: FutureFacts.

This is the tenth annual edition of FutureFacts and is timed to coincide with their annual GO conference.  FutureFacts includes an overview of key trends in various segments of the information industry, overall market trends and their top 10 predictions for 2007.  Outsell also provides a scorecard of how it did with its 2006 predictions.

The primary theme of this year's report is "Execute on the Essentials".  With growth slowing in the industry, success will be tied to strong execution to ensure revenue growth.

A few highlights from the report:
High growth segments of the information industry the next four years will include Search, Aggregation & Syndication, HR Information, Market Research and Credit & Financial Information.  At the bottom end of the market will be News Providers and Yellow Pages & Directories.  The overall annual growth rate for the information industry is predicted to be 6.4% for the four year period.

User expectations continue to grow, while their experiences continue to disappoint.  The time spent on information tasks continues to rise (average knowledge worker now spends 13 hours per week using information vs. 11 hours just 2 years ago).  Yet, according to the report, the average user's Internet searches an amazing 31% of the time.  Some of the reason why users are spending more time on information tasks is their inability to get the right results from search engines.

Industry-wide growth is expected to slow to an average growth rate of between 6.0-6.5% over the next four years, bringing total revenue to $458 Billion by 2009.

The full report is available for free download at the Outsell web site.