Considerations when choosing your content provider
Jinfo Blog

By Victoria Alford

Abstract

When recent Jinfo Community sessions on content aggregation platforms and premium news platforms revealed the vast range of considerations for vendors to take into account, we decided to bring those together. We asked three vendors to give their feedback on the sessions.

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Content at a price

Jinfo recently held two Community sessions to explore how well news providers and content aggregation platforms meet user needs. We invited vendors to give their views on the discussion, and were interested to find out the many different considerations companies take into account.

Over the course of two sessions, participants discussed some of the most-used suppliers, including Acquire Media's NewsEdge, LexisNexis Newsdesk, Factiva, InfoDesk, Vable, Manzama, Nexis, EditorEye, Attensa, Alacra and Northern Light. 

Jinfo Subscribers can sign in now to read some insights from the sessions in:

• "Are content aggregation platforms meeting your needs?". The article also offers some tips on choosing your aggregation platform.

• In "Comparing news products - how do Factiva and Nexis measure up?", we looked at perhaps the two best-known premium news platforms. The article also includes a SWOT analysis of them both, based on the lively Community discussion. 

Content is king

In the recent Jinfo article "Acquire Media instils confidence in content", we heard from Brad Scher, CEO of content technology expert Acquire Media, who commented on the session.

With the consensus that buyers feel content is king, database service NewsEdge, which Acquire Media purchased from Thomson in 2007, ensures the content collection they provide is constantly reviewed and edited. It needs to be relevant to the audience, so spam is filtered out and unique content is kept in.

Brad found the thoughts on what users wanted vendors to know invaluable, listing three points that he would take away from the session:

1. Content is still king
2. Technology "improvements" have not always worked out for the better 
3. Buyers want to work in partnership with their vendor.

The price of high-quality news

Brian Gelinas, head of product strategy, knowledge and insight at Dow Jones, gave us his views on the cost factor of news platforms in "How Dow Jones is taking Factiva forward".

With the vast amount of "fake news" and free and easily shareable news available online, Dow Jones has made it its mission to unlock high quality and trusted information for its customers.

Brian explained, "In response to the statements of 'paying twice for information', use-cases like current awareness and text analytics are very different and information providers need to be compensated for both."

Dow Jones has provided Factiva customers with access to nearly 33,000 premium sources and, based on its latest research, 74% of its most used sources are not freely available online. Find out more in the recent Jinfo article "How Dow Jones is taking Factiva forward". 

Customers at the heart

Placing customers at the heart of everything they do, is the mantra Katy Fixter told us that LexisNexis believes in.

As general manager of the Research Segment, former lawyer Katy Fixter explained that the "voice of the customer" had inspired a "series of product advisory boards and customer panels containing broad samplings of customers that cut across personas and businesses, as well as pulling from customers with varying levels of research usage, some of whom are power users and others who may log in to Nexis less often".

As Katy went on to explain in "Find out what's in store for Nexis", the quality of information found on search engines such as Google can be questionable, with promoted content ranking high alongside low-quality content with no authoritative research content. LexisNexis, on the other hand, is leading the industry with trusted content - a high priority for customers.

Read the Jinfo article "Find out what's in store for Nexis" to find out how the functionality of Nexis has been improved for a unique customer experience, tailored to specific industries and use-cases.

Jinfo's analysis of content aggregators

Finally, don't miss analysis from our director of research, Robin Neidorf, in "Defining content aggregators in current awareness". Here she explains essential elements of a current awareness solution, and how to define whether you need an intelligence platform or a current awareness solution.

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