Content Matters: Emerging Content Technologies

June 08, 2006

Newsgator Brings RSS to the Enterprise

Though most users still don't have any idea what RSS means, underneath the covers RSS is taking hold within many applications they use. My.yahoo is now RSS-based and the new IE7 and Windows Vista will leverage RSS as the primary means of pushing content to users.

Whether or not the term RSS gains prominence, its ubiquity is not really in question. RSS is the protocol that will be used more and more for distribution of information inside the enterprise and among publishers and their users.

One company seems well-positioned to reap the benefits of widespread RSS adoption. While there are many web and software-based clients for RSS, most of them are geared to the individual desktop. The one company which is focusing its efforts on RSS for the enterprise is Newsgator.

Newsgator has an RSS Platform and suite of products geared to three audiences:
1. End-users: products like FeedDemon, a software-based reader, NetNewsWire, a Mac-based client, and Newsgator Inbox, which lets you use Microsoft Outlook as your RSS client.
2. Enterprise customers, with the NewsGator Enterprise Server.
3. Private label clients seeking to use RSS to distribute content to customers.

While RSS readers are becoming a commodity, Newsgator offers the advantage that all of its readers - for the Web, the desktop and mobile devices - are integrated, so if you've read something on one device, it will be marked as read in another.

Newsgator Enterprise Server is an infrastructure product geared towards helping the enterprise manage vast numbers of feeds coming in from the outside and being distributed within an organization. Part of the value proposition is simply helping organizations manage bandwidth, to avoid the types of problems that early push applications like PointCast created. If you have 1,000 users who subscribe to a specific Wall Street Journal feed, for example, you can bring that feed in once to the server, rather than having a thousand users pulling it directly to their desktops. As companies continue to move away from installed desktop applications, a server-based model works well.

The Enterprise Server can also be used to centrally manage blacklists and whitelists, to manage access credentials, to block undesirable URLs and to restrict access outside the firewall. Version 1.3 of the Newsgator server, just released, adds new features such as "clippings", the ability to drop articles into a folder which users may subscribe to, the ability to forward any email to an RSS feed, "smart feeds" (persistent keyword searches) and more.

The early adopters of Newsgator Enterprise have come from a number of industries. Early adopter firms like Edelman Public Relations and executive search firm Spencer Stuart have been among the first on board. According to Newsgator Director of Product Marketing Todd Berkowitz, they are seeing strong interest from pharmaceutical companies, law firms and others. Applications include use of external content for sales, marketing and competitive intelligence, as well as internal efforts from corporation communications, human resources and product development.

Newsgator has also signed up some impressive clients for its private label services. The A beta version of My USAToday, driven by Newsgator allows users to construct a home page combining content from USAToday and external sources. Similarly, My Newsweek is a syndicated service hosted by Newsgator, featuring feeds by columnists as well as feeds for hot topics and latest buzz.

What's coming next for Newsgator? According to Berkowitz, some of the items on the development roadmap include support for tagging, improved filtering and relevance and integration with other desktop clients.

What's the impact for publishers?
As I've posted previously, it's pretty clear that RSS is coming and coming fast. It may get a cooler name (Microsoft and Feedburner seem to have adopted the term WebFeed), but that little orange logo will be driving virtually all applications that push content. If you haven't begun to establish an XML strategy, it's time to start now. While content providers with strong technology resources may wish to develop their own solutions, those who prefer to outsource may want to look at private label solutions from companies like Newsgator.

Barry Graubart on June 08, 2006 in Content Business, Emerging Content Technologies, Social Media, social media, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 24, 2006

Netvibes: A user configurable, Ajax-based RSS reader

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.

Barry Graubart on April 24, 2006 in Content Business, Emerging Content Technologies, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 20, 2006

SocialText: Communities that Work

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.

Barry Graubart on April 20, 2006 in Content Business, Emerging Content Technologies, Social Media, social media, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 29, 2006

ajaxWrite: an Ajaxy competitor to Word

ajaxWrite is the latest in a group of web-based word processors, leveraging Ajax development processes. Ajax, which stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML, is a rapidly growing development approach which allows browser-based applications to act more like desktop applications. Specifically, it uses javascript to enable applications to redraw individual portions of a screen so that the screen doesn't have to be fully redrawn each time a change or selection is made.

The first thing you'll notice about ajaxWrite is that it looks and feels much like Microsoft Word(tm). The second thing you'll notice is how fast it is. Within a few seconds you'll be tempted to forget that you're using a web-based app and think you're using Word(tm). Most of the menu items you're accustomed to are there, including format and style options. ajaxWrite can open Word, WordPerfect, StarOffice and other file formats. Documents can be saved as Word docs or even as PDF files.

So, what are the benefits of ajaxWrite?
One benefit is that it's free, where Microsoft Office runs about $500 per seat. Also, ajaxWrite is platform independent; it runs on Windows, Linux or Mac. As a hosted application, there's no IT required to install and new versions are automatically available. Conversely, ajaxWrite is still a beta (even though there's no label to that effect). It only runs in Firefox, not IE and some key features, such as spell checker, are still under development.

I don't expect ajaxWrite or its bretheren like Writely (recently acquired by Google) or Zoho Writer to take significant market share from Microsoft. At least not initially, and not in the core business market. But these applications may begin to eat into Microsoft in certain markets, particularly in the educational market, nonprofits and small business, as well as some of the efforts to bring technology to the Third World.

What are the implications for publishers?
I think that ajaxWrite sends a few strong signals to any technology-focused company.
First, by going right after the number one business application, ajaxWrite helps bring prominence to Ajax programming and the ability to create real apps on the web. If your web-based applications are still simple flat views of content, it's probably time to rethink them.

Second, these approaches have changed the pace at which products are developed. Companies still using traditional development processes, with 9-18 month development cycles, will have difficulty remaining competitive. Innovative companies today are working in 3-6 month development cycles, often releasing products with an extended beta period, using customer feedback to enhance the product after it's been released.

Third, the business models for these applications are different. A hosted application doesn't need to be sold the way shrink-wrapped software might. These applications are well-suited towards free advertising-supported versions, perhaps with a premium version on a subscription basis. This model should help publishers, particularly those with an ad-supported content business.

Products like ajaxWrite or the new Google Finance prove that you can quickly develop and deploy strong functionality in web-based applications. Publishers looking to increase revenue and market share should look at these as models for how they can provide tools to increase the usability of their content.

Barry Graubart on March 29, 2006 in Emerging Content Technologies, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

March 14, 2006

Roll Your Own Search Engine with Rollyo

The concept of vertical search engines has been around for quite a few years. In fact, Alacra launched its Portal B vertical search engine more than five years ago. Of course, timing is everything in technology and it seems that now the timing is right for vertical search.

One of the emerging leaders in this space is Rollyo. Named for “roll your own” search engine, Rollyo allows you to select up to twenty five websites and create a custom search engine indexing just those sites.

Users can create multiple “searchrolls” for different topics. Or, a user could create a searchroll containing news from your favorite news sites for a given topic. And, as with any good Web 2.0 app, you can easily share your searchrolls with others, providing a social component to search indexes.

So, who needs a personal search engine? Most of us do, actually. While there are times when you want to search the entire Internet for some obscure information, there are many other times when you want to search “trusted sources” which can provide you with more relevant results. There are numerous technologies out there which try to use statistical or linguistic approaches to disambiguate terms with multiple meanings. But, if your search index contains only sites related to island-hopping, there’s no confusion over which “Java” you’re search for.

For a quick test drive of a personal search engine, try out the Content Industry Searchroll which I created in about three minutes using Rollyo. Try terms like tagging, workflow or blog and see how the results are more relevant than in a full search engine. Want to learn how Pfizer uses content-related technologies? Just enter "Pfizer" in the search box and browse the results. That would be an impossible search to do using Google on the full web.

What’s the implication for publishers?

Publishers, particularly trade press, enthusiast publications or industry-specific information publishers are well-suited to provide vertical search to their users. Whether it’s indexing surfer sites for Surfer Magazine, building and construction sites for McGraw Hill’s CIG or political coverage for CQ, enabling users to search an editorially-chosen set of trusted content is a tremendous value.

I have heard many database publishers complain that the Internet is eating away at their business and that they are having difficulty retaining customers. Creating a vertical search engine is an effective and manageable way to add significant value to your content beyond what Google, Yahoo and Microsoft can deliver. After all, you’ve been saying for years that you add editorial value beyond simple compilation. Well, roll your own and prove it.

Barry Graubart on March 14, 2006 in Emerging Content Technologies, Social Media, social media, Technology, Vertical Search | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 06, 2006

Last.fm: Big brother is listening

“Big brother is listening.”

In light of recent news of NSA wiretaps and FBI “raids” on libraries that may sound ominous. But, what if you asked “big brother” to listen in?

That’s the idea behind last.fm. Last.fm, formerly AudioScrobbler, is an iTunes plugin that drives a music recommendation engine. The concept is pretty simple. The plugin monitors all the music you listen to on iTunes, generating lists of your favorite performers and songs, then compares those to others in their database.

Using various matching algorithms, Last.fm is able to create music neighbors, people whose listening habits are similar. The more interesting information comes when you click on a performer you like. The Last.fm engine quickly shows you other “similar” bands. I have found this a great way to discover new bands. For example, if you look at the Arctic Monkeys, you’ll see Maximo Park, the Libertines, the Subways, the Rakes and other UK indie bands. Another useful feature is that you’ll see the songs for each band or performer ranked by the number of times they are listened to. Want to sample a few songs from the Subways? With just a click you’ll see their most popular songs on Last.fm are Oh Yeah and Rock and Roll Queen.

Last.fm also supports tagging of songs and artists, as well as the ability to recommend an artist to another last.fm user. Outside of the “neighbor recommendations”, the community aspects of Last.fm are modest today, but there’s certainly opportunity for growth.

Last.fm has also launched the last.fm player, a personalized online radio station. With the Last.fm player you can listen to your own favorites or choose to listen to what they call neighbor radio. And now, my biggest complaint about last.fm has been addressed. Most of us listen to a lot more music on our iPod than on our PC. Yet Last.fm only picked up what was played on your PC. Now third parties have developed free plugins that will take your iPod usage and include that in your Last.fm results.

Last.fm also makes your listening habits accessible via an RSS feed. The feed itself doesn’t serve any great purposes today (not sure anyone out there needs real-time reporting of what I’m listening to), but could lend itself to an interesting mashup. What if VNU’s Billboard were to layer their sales rankings on top of Last.fm play lists, then cross-reference those by country? It might make for some interesting predictive capabilities for the music industry. Fred Wilson, in the Music section of his blog, includes his weekly and all-time top 10 playlists from Last.fm.

So, what’s the message for content providers?

First, monitoring customer behavior is not a bad thing. In fact, if you are upfront about what you’re doing and offer clear and compelling benefits to your users, they will welcome the monitoring.

Second, recommendation engines are not simply for e-tailers. If you can leverage community usage behavior to cluster similar content together, it can create a powerful and compelling recommendation engine. Combine that with simple distribution tools such as RSS and you have a low-cost, high value tool to promote new content to existing users.

P.S. For those interested in knowing what I am listening to, you can visit my last.fm profile.

Barry Graubart on March 06, 2006 in Content Business, Emerging Content Technologies, Music, Social Media, social media | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Emerging Content Technologies

I am starting a new list on Content Matters, of Emerging Content Technologies.

There are so many compelling new things happening in the content technology space that I felt it would be helpful to catalog and share them. Many of these companies are what are commonly referred to as “Web 2.0” products such as tagging, vertical search, social software, RSS, mashups and related technologies.

Why not simply include these in my existing list of the “50 Content Companies that Matter”? The main reason is that the characteristics of these companies are very different from most of the companies on that list. Most of these are early stage companies. While their concepts are intriguing, as innovators, they may not be the ones who eventually emerge as market leaders when these technologies are adopted. Some of these companies will not make it; others will be acquired by Google, Yahoo or others along the way.

Many in “traditional” content companies may wish to overlook these companies; after all, few of these companies have made inroads in the b2b market. It’s true that teenagers are bigger users of mashups and social software today than business users. But, traditional publishers should ignore them at their peril. These companies and their offspring are the ones who will be taking your market share in the years to come. To that end, wherever appropriate, I will share my thoughts on the relevancy of these technologies to more traditional content businesses. My recommendation to you is that you play with these various applications, making sure that you understand them, then think about how they might impact your business in the years to come.

The first post in this new series is on Last.fm.

As always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions.

Barry Graubart on March 06, 2006 in Content Business, Emerging Content Technologies, Social Media, social media, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 28, 2006

What's a Swicki?

You may have noticed a new tag cloud on the Content Matters blog. Entitled "Content Buzz Cloud", it's on the upper left of the blog.

The cloud is a "Swicki" and it comes courtesy of social software provider Eurekester. At first glance, it looks simply like a web 2.0 tag cloud interface a la delicious. But, the swicki is more than that. Behind the tag cloud is a vertical search engine. Similar to Rollyo, the Swicki lets you select specific web sites to include in your index. It also includes a full web crawl, but the matches from your vertical sites show up higher in your results.

So, what's the social software angle? Well, a Swicki is designed for community tuning. Users can tune the results by removing sites that don't match, by adding new sites or by marking certain sites to go to the top of the results.

For Content Matters, I've focused the Swicki on content-related topics and sites. Swicki is still in beta, and some key features, such as including select blogs, are yet to be released (today, it includes all blogs in its index). So, how are the results? Try a few searches and let me know.

Barry Graubart on February 28, 2006 in Emerging Content Technologies, Social Media, social media, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)