Factiva makeover raises multiple mobile issues
Jinfo Blog

By Tim Buckley Owen

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Factiva’s comprehensive makeover in the form of a rich new interface represents a step change for this long established business aggregator. But potentially no less significant is the range of devices on which the new offering will need to be rolled out.

Employing clever metrics to exploit the huge volume of information Factiva now offers, its new interface will include Snapshot views to enable users to illustrate key trends – including a create-your-own facility. Timelines, charts and heat maps should help users spot unexpected patterns in a company, industry or region.

Back at Factiva, warm-bodied professionals work on Factiva Picks – creating well honed queries around headlines in a particular industry, and in some cases hand picking articles to highlight significant developments. There’s trend visualisation over different time periods, showing who’s coming up or down in terms of news volume – and a Radar view highlights key topics relating to the top mentioned companies.

Factiva will also be beefing up its content offering, with 100 new Arabic sources (and auto translation) plus 19 million company profiles and more than 3,000 cherry-picked blogs. The new Factiva interface and Snapshots will be available from 30 April.

No less significant, though, will be the launch the following month of Factiva for iPad. The iPad app should just be the first, reflecting its dominance in the tablet market – but, as Factiva’s David Chivers told LiveWire, the company is also looking at Android devices (tablet and phone) as well as the BlackBerry (including its tablet device in due course) and iPhone.

Quoting a forecast from Morgan Stanley that more people will access the internet from phones and other mobile devices than from desktop computers by 2015, Chivers explains that Factiva’s approach is one of trying to support as many devices as possible with one single experience. Factiva is not alone in this; the Financial Times has taken a platform-neutral approach to its content since last summer, and other players are also moving quickly with on-the-go offerings.

LexisNexis, for example, whose metamorphosis from simple content retailer to workflow solution provider continues unabated, has recently announced new mobile applications for its Time Matters  and Firm Manager practice management software solutions, enabling lawyers to turn downtime into billable hours. And LinkedIn has just excitedly announced the availability of LinkedIn for Android version 1.0.

Gartner currently forecasts that Android will become the most popular operating system by the end of 2011 and will account for 49% of the smartphone market by 2012, while other systems will lose market share in proportion. Anyone who wants to put their content where users need it has no choice but to pursue multiple mobile devices – but the issue could become one of device winners and losers.

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