FreePint Report: News Aggregation Products and Trends
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

The FreePint Report: News Aggregation Products and Trends collates reviews of key products and articles on marketplace trends to provide an essential read for information content buyers. Reviews range from long-standing "must have" products such as Factiva and Nexis.com to niche aggregation products and complementary supporting products including Linex and Attensa StreamServer.

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Over the five years FreePint has been studying needs and preferences for news content in organisations, we’ve documented a number of trends in purchase patterns and usage. Key developments include the increasing importance of mobile technologies when buyers evaluate service providers and a shift of the source mix to include more free and hard-to-aggregate content.

One consistent finding has been that information buyers strongly value premium services for delivering news content into their organisations. Despite the pressures on their content budgets, they are committed to working with vendors who invest in and deliver news content through aggregated platforms.

A few services consistently appear on surveys as the “product of choice” in the news category: Factiva from Dow Jones and Nexis.com from LexisNexis are the two most frequently named. The widespread use of these products is part of the reason FreePint reviews or attempts to review each at least annually.

New & Niche Offerings

But a range of niche products also serves the market, and we keep track of which ones are rising on buyers’ “to review” lists.

At the same time, technologies continue to advance, bringing disruptive business models into the marketplace. New offerings come from companies and platforms that never used to be considered “news sources”.

Changes to Key Services

Add to this environment current customer uncertainty around Dow Jones’s in-development “DJX”, a new platform that will combine several products, including Factiva, in an all-inclusive product. It’s little wonder FreePint has been fielding questions from buyers about how these trends come together to influence and change their options for news aggregation services.

To support customers with their review process, the FreePint Report: News Aggregation Products and Trends pulls together a number of resources:

Reviews of generalist news aggregation products (executive summaries and Mini Reviews)

• Factiva
• FirstRain
• Newsdesk from Moreover
• NewsEdge from Acquire Media
• Silobreaker
• Nexis 

Reviews of specialist news aggregation products (executive summaries and Mini Reviews)

• InsideView: focus on sales purposes, executive summary
• LinkedIn: commentary article, and follow up here
• Analyzer on Nexis.com: module for PR purposes, Mini Review
• CisionPoint: focus on PR purposes, executive summary
• InfoMonitor from InfoDesk: focus on CI, Mini Review
• iSell: focus on sales purposes, executive summary
• Newswhip: commentary article
• Opfine: financial, company and market sentiment, Mini Review
• Meltwater Press: focus on PR purposes, Mini Review; commentary on copyright issues with underlying offering here
• Europresse: focus on European sources
• Eureka.cc: focus on European and Canadian sources, full review

Reviews of infrastructure or supporting products that enable news awareness in organisations

• Linex: executive summary
• Attensa StreamServer: executive summary

Trend articles reflecting shifting factors in the market

• Financial News Publishers take on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Research comparing satisfaction ratings from Factiva users and Nexis users
• Free, Useful, Dangerous? Comparative Review of Google News, Yahoo! News and Bing News
• Micro News Tools
• Consuming Info Via Streams

In addition, the Comparative Report on News Products published in December 2012 compares products reviewed by FreePint over the previous 12 months across five variables, including sources, search, analytics and more.

Further Study Required

Even all this background is only the beginning of a full review of options, variables and considerations which information managers need to make when selecting and supporting news aggregation solutions within their organisations.

For example, a whole range of products has been developed with a laser-focus on social media rather than traditional news sources – depending on an organisation’s needs and objectives.

That’s why we’re now planning a FreePint Series: News Needs in the Enterprise: Beyond Aggregation, to run from October through November 2013. This series will include updated research on news needs and preferences, product reviews, comparisons on variables, Q&A with vendors on strategy, and more.

Learn more and register your interest for regular updates on the series as it develops, as well as opportunities to guide our research.

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