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Showing the Way: InfoCommerce 2004
Points Database and Directory Publishers to the Future |
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4 October 2004 |
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This year's
InfoCommerce 2004 conference database and directory
publishers demonstrated a wide and compelling array of
success stories in applying both human and technology
factors to their evolving success stories. The emphasis was
on adding more value to content in more human contexts, in
some instance meaning better interfaces and workflow
design, in other instances better data design and
management, but in all instances with an emphasis on
maintaining relationships with audiences who are
increasingly both sophisticated consumers and publishers
who can contribute to the value of online content services.
While getting human contexts right is still a challenge to
many, the models of excellence offered at this conference
point out some clear paths to future successes. |
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The last
piece of confetti from
BizBash
CEO David Adler's presentation has fluttered out of folders and
garment bags, but the memories of this year's
InfoCommerce 2004 conference linger on. We at Shore had
both a ring-side and an in-the-ring view of this year's
presentations and you can find our take on all of the panels
and major presentations in our
new Industry Events weblog to see how our memories compare
to yours if you were attending. A successful event by any
measure, InfoCommerce 2004 brought a sold-out audience at the
Westin in Philadelphia, PA a wide array of leaders in the
content industry addressing the strategic and hands-on issues
of how to make money in today's marketplace for content
databases and directories. While some traditional print
directory products were on display at the conference, the value
of print comes in perspective as a supplemental factor for an
industry that is moving quickly to adapt to the realities of
online search engines and institutions who insist on close
integration of content sources into their own online work
environments.
From Morningstar CEO Joe Mansueto's
opening keynote to presentations from leading firms such as
Thomson, Alacra, HighBeam, LinkedIn, Endeca, EDGAR Online,
Vault.com and many others, one of the key themes that came
through at this year's conference was the importance of
engineering content products maximize the human factor's value
in building and marketing database and directory services.
Barry Schwartz, author of
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, captured
this dilemma best of all as he demonstrated how research is
showing that a galaxy of choices in modern society - or even a
small proliferation of them - tends to make people feel worse,
not better, about the choices that they do make. While this is
good news for publishers and aggregators that simplify choices
for their customers with highly refined user interfaces, it
also is a note of warning to those who feel that increasing the
scope and range of services for a content offering is the key
to success. Content services can scale to a certain degree, but
if you're not simplifying choices for specific audiences in the
process of doing so scale itself may not be a very palatable
solution to growth in the long run.
A few other ways in which InfoCommerce
2004 pointed out the importance of the human factor included:
- Making the most of the human
element of offshore services. Exhibitors such as
Thomson Digital demonstrated their expertise in
supporting the production of high-quality print directories
and other print products via facilities in India, but
exhibitors were also complemented by many attendees trying
find uses for a wide array of offshore skills. The question
that these services have on their lips is the same as
publishers in our local markets: how to we avoid being
commoditized into lowest-cost provider services? The
opportunities for publishers to take advantage of educated
talent pools in markets such as India go far beyond sourcing
lower-skill components of product production. To keep local
teams' value at their peak being able to source highly
specialized content quality assurance and acquisition skills
to these markets will be a very key factor for database and
directory companies trying to inject as much hard-to-engineer
human value into their content products. In a highly
globalized marketplace for publishing products and services
the offshore movement has barely begun to make its full
impact felt on the industry's high-value human elements.
- Leveraging the full value of
today's leading publishers: individuals and institutions.
The demo of the
LinkedIn
service by CEO Reid Hoffman drew one of the largest crowds
after his panel presentation - no small wonder considering
that his service adds a new registrant every seventeen
seconds pumping in new content and relationship information
and is growing its database at a near-exponential rate. Users
in the LinkedIn environment have a very high level of control
over the quality of their contact relationships, which tends
to encourage them to build rather than restrict relationships
through the product. In other words, LinkedIn treats their
individual content providers not as short-term building
blocks to short-cut profits but publishers with long-term
goals who must be respected as much as any other content
provider. In an era in which Web harvesting and other
automated techniques for content gathering continue to gain
steam for building large bases of content this process of
gathering content and relationships at human scale and human
speed may seem to be antithetical to an effective growth
strategy. But the success of LinkedIn at building a
content service around human relationships needs to be
examined carefully by publishers large and small.
- It's the context that matters, but
engineering the context requires a lot of human insight.
"Context" is this year's supremely overused word, yet for a
good reason. Contextual advertising has mushroomed in the
past year to become one of the leading drivers for content
ecommerce and the importance of taxonomies, keywords and
other content contextualization tools in online ads, premium
content databases and institutional workflow solutions loomed
large at this conference. Yet if there is any one area where
technology has yet to progress to the point of making our
lives easier in a big way contextualization would be near the
top of the list. Some technologies at the conference such as
Endeca's
faceted content navigation scheme and
Convera's
management of structured and unstructured content
demonstrated high promise for improving our lives via
contextualization, but in all honesty the results in many
other instances still leave lots of folks going the Google
route or reaching for tried and true print publications
whether or not those are effective routes. Human insight
within a human context is the hardest factor to replicate or
satisfy, leaving many content and technology providers still
scrambling to provide the 'n'th degree necessary for a highly
successful online content service.
Database and directory publishers
demonstrated a lot of significant progress in their services at
InfoCommerce 2004, eagerly embracing changes in their industry
that are moving many beyond worries of commoditization and more
towards ways of maximizing profits in an increasingly rich
environment for online professional content services. This time
next year we expect an even richer array of success stories in
applying the human element to publishing - well deserving of
whatever confetti gets dropped at that time.
-
John Blossom
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