Launching the FreePint Topic Series: Beyond Aggregation
Jinfo Blog

By Andrew Grave

Abstract

Andrew Grave looks at the key themes in the FreePint Topic Series: Beyond Aggregation which launches this week and is running throughout October and November. These include DIY aggregation, cost control and changes in content and licensing, explored in a range of articles, reviews, Q&As and webinars.

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Information departments today are fortunate in having an unprecedented array of news aggregation tools. These include those from traditional providers like LexisNexis, press monitoring services such as Meltwater through to Software as a Service (SaaS) providers including Northern Light and Attensa. To this eclectic mix we can add social aggregators and companies which provide article précis.

However, navigating through the sheer quantity and variety of tools can be a painstaking task. Claire Whayman will do this for us in her Market Map article coming soon which will explain the types of aggregators, the key differences between them and their relative strengths.

Supporting You Through DIY Aggregation

Given the changes in the marketplace, and in particular those occurring with Factiva, several readers have told us that they are actively considering DIY aggregation solutions.

Compared to the relative safety of having all your content bundled with your software, a DIY solution may seem a daunting, albeit interesting, task. How do you start such a process? What about issues like licensing and copyright that a vendor usually takes care of?

We will be providing a guide to such challenges along with suggestions for ways to tackle them. We will also be providing a tool to assist you in selecting and evaluating your news aggregator.

Our case study of legal firm RPC’s adoption of the DIY solution Attensa should also prove enlightening. In her article, Shimrit Janes explains how the knowledge management team analysed their lawyers’ use of current awareness, what they hoped to achieve from it and what their pain points were. She demonstrates how the team went beyond simply providing an aggregation solution to providing guidance on what to do with the news once it was received and outlines how RPC was able to act on the news ahead of its peers.

Cost Control

Pressure to reduce costs never goes away, especially so with the proliferation of free solutions like Flipboard.

The series tackles this issue in two ways:

• Firstly, we will examine whether such solutions have a place in a corporate information environment
  
  
• Secondly, contributors from two of the Big Four accountancy firms will share with us their experience of consolidating news suppliers.

Product Reviews

Before drawing up a shortlist of news aggregators, it is essential to understand what each provides in terms of content and functionality. Our team of reviewers is assessing an extensive range of tools. First off the workbench are Meltwater and M-Adaptive. These two solutions are aimed in particular at PR and marketing users.

These reviews will be followed by many more including Nexis.com, Northern Light, Thomson Reuters Eikon and NewsEdge.com. We are also working to secure reviews with FirstRain, Lone Buffalo and Silobreaker.

Mobile

Tesco’s recent launch of its Hudl tablet aimed at the three quarters of Britons without such devices highlights the growing importance of mobile news provision. We will be carefully examining which aggregators manage the provision of news for mobile devices well and those whose offers are at a less advanced stage.

Staying On Top of Developments

To help keep you on top of developments, we have lined up Q&As with some of the key suppliers. These will provide insight both to their current thinking and their future plans.

FreePint’s content expert Anne Jordan will also bring us up to date on changes in content licensing before sharing her predictions with us.

We’ll also be publishing the FreePint Survey: News Needs and Preferences 2013. Learn more about this, our sixth such report. If you’ve not had a chance to do so yet, and are an information manager knowledgeable about and/or responsible for your organisation's use of news products and services, please complete the online survey now.

Webinars

As well as this extensive range of reviews and articles, we’re also planning two webinars:

• Customised integrations of news content
• News awareness technology installations.

Further details on these webinars will be published later this month.

Editor's Note: Beyond Aggregation

This article is part of the FreePint Topic Series: Beyond Aggregation, which runs from October to November 2013. Register your interest, and you'll get pre-notification of when registration opens for any webinars in this series, as well as a free copy of the FreePint Report: Buyer's Guide on News Content when we publish in November.

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