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Shore Senior Analysts Jean Bedord and Janice McCallum provide detailed coverage of the panels and conversations held at the recent SIIA Content Forum at Universal City, California.
Click here to view our Industry Events weblog coverage

At a recent conference in Tokyo, Japan executives from leading industries convened to hear about the latest and greatest technologies and techniques for integrating content within their enterprises. Some of these capabilities are fairly new to Japanese industrial markets, which have not advanced as far as U.S. industrial markets in integrating internal and external content sources into useful portals and applications for solving business problems. As Japan and other nations consider how to compete with countries that benefit from both globally accepted languages and advanced content integration capabilities it will be important for them to consider how to leverage assets beyond their traditional I.T. strengths to create strong content-centric cultures in their organizations.

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It's awesome! It's dangerous! Sounds like this could be the lead-in for the next summer blockbuster film, but the rash of contradictory noises are all pointing towards Google's online efforts to integrate scholarly content into its search engines. The level of hostile noise notched up a bit this week as a letter from The Association of American University Presses sent to Google (PDF version) has been circulating in the press, with numerous covering articles ensuing. But as noted in several accounts (AP wire story for example), in spite of the hostile tone of the letter there are no plans afoot so far by the AAUP to sue Google - fueled in part, perhaps, by the fact that prominent members such as Harvard University are also active participants in the scanning project. In the letter's "16 points" that they request Google to address the gist is that the AAUP is concerned that the Google scanning effort is walking far over the line into collecting copyrighted materials unless publishers have specific objections. This seems to be somewhat in contradiction with public statements made by Google early on in the project, so it will be interesting to see what Google's response, if any, might be.

What's clear is that AAUP members have not been moving aggressively to address the use of their presses' output in digital form on many fronts. For example, reference desks at some universities are fairly liberal in managing access to digital works. At the same time other efforts at popularizing digital access to scholarly content are working successfully with Google to promote its use in a structured manner. This week Project Muse, a subscription-based service providing access to scholarly materials, has announced that it will be allowing Google access to its content for indexing. The AAUP move may have some sound points to clarify, but much of it seems to be a holding action to delay confronting the larger issue of how university presses can provide a transition for their revenue models to a new era in which electronic access via channels most convenient for their readers is a given and a necessary standard. It's not a bad idea to have Google clarify what they're doing with their business model in this area, but it's perhaps more important for AAUP members to spend less time rattling sabers and more to consider what they need to do with their own business models, which have their own lethargy as the primary threat.

FOLIO: Magazine's recent poll of business media CEOs paints a picture of an industry with robust revenue growth over the past four years, with much of the growth coming in the past year of advertising renaissance. Much of the growth, according to the article, can be placed at the feet of business media companies working hard to diversify their revenue streams in that period In 2001, b-to-b media print ad revenues were 72.6 percent of the mix: in 2004, 66.7 percent. In the same period revenues from e-media, events and data soared to a combined 18.5 percent from 10.9 percent in 2001. The strengthening of business media clearly rides on the success of online properties and their ability to convert online communities into events communities effectively, with print retaining a key role as a relationship-building media for the briefcase-stuffing crowd. Unspoken in this mix, however, is the role of content distributed via aggregators such as Factiva and LexisNexis. While these channels remain important to business media the strengthening of these publications' online properties will continue to challenge traditional database services' ability to capture their increasing sophistication. Challenges also exist for business publications in serving enterprises trying to make the full value of these publications available via enterprise search engines and applications. There's plenty of good news for business publishers who are able to capture revenues shifting to online outlets, but still much work to be done adapt their content fully to an increasingly sophisticated professional audience that seeks to integrate business content more fully into applications solving business problems.

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Los Angeles and the Universal Studios Sheraton were an appropriate setting for the Software and Information Industry Association annual 2005 Content Forum, with an industry that is facing a situation similar to the broadcast industry. Publishers, content technology companies and online distributors are struggling with creating valuable channels to reach their audiences, in a world dominated by the big three search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN (does this sound like CBS, NBC, and ABC?). Yet the future for the attendees at this always lively and valuable conference is in creating specialty channels, similar to the cable TV model which can deliver hundreds of different views, each catering to a different niche audience, using a mix of advertising, pay, pay per view, and paid inclusion.

Passing the TV channel changer was an apt analogy highlighting the theme of reaching the individual user of content, not an industry per se. This requires delivering the right content at the right time to the right user, a not insignificant challenge in an industry which originated in the print media, and still derives the major part of revenue from either print advertising or subscriptions. The opening keynote panel, "Searching for Content in all the Right Places", featuring FAST Search & Transfer, Topix, Yahoo and Vivisimo, all emphasized the value and opportunity in building specialized vertical search engines/portals, structuring the content to optimize retrieval by the large search engines. Following on that theme, Shore Senior Analyst Janice McCallum, chaired the panel on "Morphing Channels: Choosing Online Channel Partners" with medical information providers, Ovid, Infotrieve, ePocrates, and FDC Reports, describing the different channels they use to reach their customers.

Defining the audience in terms of a job function, or maybe even a set of tasks, was a recurring theme in the different sessions. For ePocrates, it's the individual physician who needs certain authoritative information at the bedside, and can't be lugging around print materials or necessarily have access to a terminal. For Biz360, it's the public relations person, who needs to know breaking news which may affect their company. For Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, it's ensuring over 1000 lawyers worldwide know events and news that might affect their clients, before the client is even aware. INPUT has built a database of intelligence about government procurement, an essential source for sales people selling multi-million, even billion dollar contracts to the federal government. Congressional Quarterly delivers content to analysts who need information about congressional actions in Washington D.C. . GlobalSpec has built a database of part numbers and their technical specs for design engineers, no small feat given the vagaries of manufacturers. Infotrieve delivers content to the bench research scientists, who want a single source of journal articles from hundreds of primary publishers, and deep vertical solutions for topics such as proteomics. The individual, regardless of whether payment is through an institution or individually, is the new market reality. Interestingly, this flowed into the keynote speaker, Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson speaking to both the Ed Tech as well as the Content Forum attendees, emphasizing that the student is the customer, not the government and not the school system.

The global market place was another theme, with the search engines being the obvious worldwide distribution channel, but increasingly the content is taking on a global aspect. Variety, the quintessential American entertainment publication, now has Variety China and is looking to expand titles to other countries. Reed Business Information is not only developing international versions, but also outsourcing production, and actively looking for partners in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Ovid delivers content in local media in local markets, i.e. CD-ROM in Iran, and is also actively expanding international medical coverage through their Lippincott imprint. Infotrieve has the challenge of publishers who artificially lock themselves out of markets by fixed copyright charges which illegal in certain countries.

For more insight and details on the panels, including the perennial issue of the impact of the technology, Janice McCallum and I will be posting to the Industry Events weblog, in lieu of the virtual John Blossom, who is in Tokyo this week.

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I recently chaired a panel of market data experts at THEMEdia 2005 conference held by Goldman Sachs in London. The panel included Julie Holland, global head of Research & Asset Management at Reuters; Mark Hepsworth, managing director of Interactive Data Corporation's ComStock Europe; Hardeep Rai, executive committee member of the Information Providers User Group (IPUG); and Donal Smith, chief operating officer of Thomson Financial Europe. (The panelists were assured their individual remarks were off the record.)

In an informal and non-scientific poll at the beginning of the session, audience members were asked to give their estimates of annual revenue growth for the vendors over the next three years. The consensus was zero to down four percent. At the end of the panel, the same question was asked and the consensus declined to zero to down two percent.

My Shore Communications 2005 forecast calls for estimated revenues of $7.105 billion, a .06 percent increase from $7.060 billion in 2003. The 2004 revenue total was up three percent from $6.860 billion in 2003. For details on the 2005 forecast, contact me at jackmc@shore.com.

The Goldman Sachs panel was asked about their customers' current spending habits. One said customers were still looking to eliminate multiple and overlapping vendors. Spending on transaction services also has improved. Another said cost cutting is still very much a priority, as is spending on program trading improvements. Several said that spending to meet regulatory requirements is increasing. Spending by hedge funds continues to move higher but at a slower rate. Automated trading and algorithmic trading needs are getting more customer attention these days. One panelist said that with the 2004 Global Research Analyst Settlement in the US, there will be more of a shift from sell side research to buy side research, which will require more investments by the buy side. Bottom line? Cost cutting is still dictating spending patterns.

The panel was asked about why Bloomberg, after a well publicized entrance into the foreign exchange market two years ago, has made no headway against Reuters. One of the axioms in the market data space is that the first there tends to remain first, something that seems to be working out here. One panelist said the deal Bloomberg did with EBS to bolster its foreign exchange presence was not the answer. But, another panelist said the Bloomberg/EBS service is takings some traction and that Reuters is losing some terminals to Bloomberg. In my mind, it's clear that Reuters is still ruling the foreign exchange roost, and, if anything, is improving its share of market over Bloomberg in foreign exchange.

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Wolters Kluwer Selects diCarta Contracts to Manage Intellectual Property Agreements
FDC Reports Appoints New President, Mike Squires, Formerly of Medscape

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I've just returned from a trip to Japan where I was delivering a presentation at a conference on U.S. best practices for integrating internal and external content into enterprises. More on that later in our News Analysis and further research papers, but for now an observation about the progression of digital encoding in Japan. One gets off the plane in Tokyo and receives a visa stamp on their passport with a small square patch of black and white checkerboard-like digital data encoding. Kind of neat, in and of itself. Then on the express bus into Tokyo you see the same patch appearing on ads plastered in front of the seats. You see it on business cards, and on ads in the subway cars. This little scannable patch of data is making strong inroads, delivering what many have tried to deliver in U.S. media unsuccessfully - an easy-to-use link between paper and electronic media. Part of this little patch's success is that it doesn't hold a terrible lot of data - just enough to give address, telephone numbers and web links, with a little to spare. Earlier schemes tried to do too much, rather than linking to media that are better equipped to provide the details. With smart phones and PDAs the patches are enough to allow one to scan an item on a shelf and have your handheld device link to a Web page for details on a product or a demonstration or online ad. With an electronic culture that is using highly sophisticated cell phones as a base for media and entertainment it's no surprise that Japan is leading the way with this capability, but it's somewhat of a surprise that U.S. companies have not grabbed on to these increasingly standardized methods for linking on-the-go content consumers with paper-based experiences. There's enorrmous potential for these little patches - if the platforms and tools that use them are in place to exploit them.

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B-to-B Flying High: Exclusive Survey
Phony Accounts Eyed in LexisNexis Breach
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Fast Selected as new Search Infrastructure for EMC Documentum Enterprise Content Management
Digimarc Launches ID Validation Solution to Support Homeland Security Measures and Combat ID Theft

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This year's Enterprise Search Summit was a well-attended and robust expression of just how vital and important search functions have become for enterprises of every scale. Maturing enterprise search solutions included offerings from Google that are putting pressure on many other search engine providers to provide more internal and external content sources in a simple package with more features that make answers easier to find. Any way you measure it enterprise search has reached a new level of maturity that places far more emphasis on performance and results than experimentation and partial solutions. Users are coming out winners in this gold rush, but a broader array of sophisticated content sources and content organization tools will keep those users clamoring for more precious gold than ever before.

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The US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs held two days of hearings on the impact of Regulations NMS, which was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission by a 3-2 vote on April 7. The Committee also looked at the proposed merger of the New York Stock Exchange and Archipelago Exchange that was announced on April 20, as well as Nasdaq's proposed purchase of Instinet's electronic trading platform from Reuters that was announced on April 22.

The lineup of witnesses involved lots of people with an agenda. The panels on day one included John Thain, CEO, New York Stock Exchange; Robert Greifeld, President and CEO, Nasdaq Stock Market; Gerald Putnam, CEO, Archipelago; Edward Nicoll, CEO and Director, Instinet Group; Sandy Frucher, Chairman and CEO, Philadelphia Stock Exchange; Kim Bang, President and CEO, Bloomberg Tradebook; Scott Evans, EVP, TIAA-CREF; Thomas Joyce, Chairman and CEO, Knight Trading Group; Marc Lackritz, President, Securities Industry Association; and George Sauter, Chief Investment Officer; The Vanguard Group. SEC chairman Bill Donaldson held forth on day two.

Chairman Donaldson put some color on the proposed mergers stressing his testimony reflected his own views and not those of the other commissioners. He says the transactions resulted primarily from economic and competitive forces in the marketplace. Size matters, as does "the need to maximize economies of scale, reduce excess capacity, and, in the case of the New York Stock Exchange, respond to a growing demand for more automated trading and, at the same time, position itself to tap the public capital markets to fund future expansion opportunities."

Up to the formulation of Regulation National Market System (NMS), the lack of consistent intermarket trading rules for all NMS stocks had divided the equity markets into halves: a market for exchange-listed stocks and a market for Nasdaq stocks. For historical reasons, including the history of the NYSE as an auction market and Nasdaq as a dealer market, these stocks traded in quite different regulatory structures. Exchange-listed stocks were subject to the Intermarket Trading System, or ITS, rules that went into effect 30 years ago. These rules include trade-through restrictions, restrictions on locking or crossing quotations, and participation in a "hard" linkage system. In contrast, the market for Nasdaq stocks was just beginning to develop when the ITS was created and has never been subject to the ITS rules.

Donaldson says that with Regulation NMS, outdated and inconsistent existing rules will be eliminated. It will "facilitate competition between the NYSE and Nasdaq across all NMS stocks." Old rules, like ITS, gave floor brokers an advantage. The new trade-through rule expands the opportunities for electronic markets to compete with the NYSE floor for order flow and "ratchets up the pressure for the NYSE to implement its hybrid market proposal in a way that will truly facilitate automated trading." The new NYSE Group will have a "formidable electronic platform for acquiring market share in Nasdaq stocks."

Among the presenters, battle lines were drawn by whose ox was being gored. The various comments essentially are guesses as to what will happen when the final regulation is published later in the year.

I'll concentrate on the controversy about the flap about the new trade-through rule. (Interested readers can get all the testimony by clicking on the day one and day two links above.) When implemented, all best bids and best offers regardless of where they are will be required to interact with the best displayed prices on the electronic limit order books. Chairman Donaldson says it will "produce significant benefits for investors in the form of deeper, more liquid markets and more efficient pricing." Sounds logical to me.

The NYSE's Thain says the modernization of the trade through rule is the "centerpiece of the regulation." What's the trade-through rule? It was put in place in 1975 (before electronic trading I might add) to insure that an order would get the best available fill price before looking for the next best price. The rule essentially favors slow markets like the NYSE and in my mind is cumbersome and no longer useful now that orders can be executed electronically with a keystroke. Nasdaq does not have a trade-through rule which is to the liking of buy side institutions that are willing to trade through the best published price in order to get the order filled in the size they want.

Chairman Donaldson says the new trade-through rule "underscores the principle that, no matter where a customer order is routed, it should receive the best price that is immediately and automatically available anywhere in the national market system. The trade-through rule prevents markets from ignoring better priced automated quotes displayed by their competitors." He maintains that "smaller markets displaying the best price cannot be ignored by larger, dominant markets; the new trade-through rule will make it easier for all markets to compete on the basis of price." That should heighten competition between markets.

Kim Bang of Bloomberg's Tradebook disagrees. He says, the trade-through rule has functioned as "protectionist regulation" and has been "among the foremost impediments to competition and market efficiency." Electronic venues (like Tradebook) that offer firm bids and offers must take a detour to the NYSE for the best price. He says that while some price improvement might take place, the order runs the risk of being held or rejected as the market moves away or is filled at an inferior price. The new rule won't let orders get held on the floor eliminating the risk that specialists or others might trade around the order as they have so often in the past. He says the new rules are not to Bloomberg's liking but any change is welcome.

In my mind, the logical go to guy on trade-through is Gus Sauter the chief investment officer of The Vanguard Group. He puts his money and positions on the line every day. On the question of best execution, he told the Committee it's a combination of speed and certainty to get the expected best price, adding, "it is the best price an investor thinks he or she can obtain for the entire trade at the instant the investor decides to buy or sell securities." It minimizes transaction costs and maximizes returns. Isn't that what all this is about?

If you want a thoroughly irreverent look at trade-through, check this out.

Level playing field? Several panelists made reference to the establishment of a more level playing field once Regulation NMS is up and running. Chairman Donaldson in his Q&A sparring with the committee members brought it up repeatedly. In my years in this business, those that had been playing at the high end of the playing field at the onset of new rules and regulations invariably find themselves playing in a ditch when the changes are made. Anybody want to buy or leasse a large high-ceiling room at the southwest corner of Broad and Wall Streets in lower Manhattan?

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Most print database publishers have learned -- often the hard way -- that you don't mess with success, or even failure for that matter. Directory users are highly resistant to change, so even improvements come with real risk attached. What particularly fascinates me is that the it is the most poorly designed directories that have the subscribers most vocally opposed to making changes to layout, indexes and overall organization.

The explanation for this is partly that directory users are creatures of habit. Once they are comfortable with how something works, they don't want to have to re-learn the product. There's also a secret club aspect to it -- once users accustom themselves to cryptic codes, unintuitive indexing and arrangement, and non-standard abbreviations, it's as if they've cracked a code and joined a secret society that makes them a little smarter and a little more valuable in their organizations.

Not surprisingly, this passionate preference for the status quo extends to Internet-based directories as well. Unfortunately the ease of making changes to user interfaces has tempted more than one publisher to begin an endless series of "improvements" to their online products, leaving a trail of customer anger and frustration in its wake. On several occasions, I have experienced this myself, finding the online database I logged into on Friday bears no resemblance to the one I logged into on Monday. My first reaction, "why did they mess with something that worked just fine?"

In many cases, publishers have abdicated control over design of their Web products to their IT departments. Good intentions notwithstanding, IT-designed Web sites tend to favor neat and cool over functional an intuitive. This mindset even extends to colors. A professional site designer believes "less is more" in terms of color; a programmer believes that if there are 64 million available color combinations available, as many of them should be used as possible.

Publishers should monitor and discourage gratuitous "upgrades" to their Web sites. Changes to layout, navigation and functionality should be implemented slowly and only after customer testing. Familiarity with your interface is a form of subscriber "lock in," don't throw it away on a whim

David Scott has a great nose for many things in our industry, so it was a pleasure to read his recent post on the new Pew Internet and American Life Project Report on Weblogs (PDF format, a bit of a bulky download). David shrewdly picks up on the lack of substantiation in the report for a Reuters story's claims that the report dispels the notion that weblogs are replacing mainstream media outlets. There's this ongoing neurosis in news organizations about being usurped by weblogs, when in fact, as David points out, they play a role in forming news distinct from most traditional journalism. As he notes, "It is better to think of the Web as a huge city teaming with individuals and blogs as the sounds of independent voices just like the street corner soapbox preacher or that friend of yours who always recommends the best books." In short, weblogs are us, the royal "we" of personal content. Some of us even know how to monetize our skills through weblogs, but at the end of the day weblogs are the voices of people that flow into formal news coverage - voices that are not recognized oftentimes as legitimate sources, not attributed as sources or vetted as reliable sources often enough by journalists. To disrespect weblogs as news content sources is to disrespect sources in general and to be tied to the narcissistic journalism that plagues much of our U.S. news media. The news has to spring from somewhere, so it may as well be from people who have the courage to write about events with passion and conviction - and hopefully with facts. But we'll leave that last part to the journalists, won't we...?

The media crowds are in a tizzy about the New York Times' announcement of its plans for charging users an annual fee in September to read its Op-Ed pieces, news columnists and archives in a new bundle called TimesSelect as one way to bolster online revenues. On one level this makes sense: to be honest I hardly read the darn hard copy version any more but generally skip to the Op-Ed pieces to see if anyone has a good take on the news. But with weblogs in abundance it's hardly the last port of call for this kind of content, even as new and similarly positioned opinions in new free outlets like the Huffington Post add a far wider array of op-ed outlooks in one easily bookmarked or RSSed site. One has to assume that the marketing folks at NYT took a look at the stats on what people still cared about in the Times from a brand perspective and tried to draw a moat around it. But it just doesn't seem like this is going to fly any better than any other attempt at building subscription value around content as opposed to unique features or services.

What's also making somewhat shady sense is Times SVP Martin Nisenholtz' evolving model for affiliates noted in ClickZ Network's coverage of his comments at a recent industry event. Though 85 percent of its existing traffic comes through its site homepage, Nisenholz notes how the rise of RSS feeds and links from MyYahoo! and other affiliate channels are driving much of the growth in site visits. The scheme? Unbundle site content and drive it into the channels most valued by content consumers. That part sounds pretty sensible, but then Click Z states that "The idea is to sell bloggers TimesSelect and incentivize them to link to content behind the subscription wall by giving them a cut of the revenue gained via new subscribers they refer." Come again? Sell bloggers content? Let's try that again, shall we? Media companies keep thinking that their content is different enough to allow it to be priced differently in open distribution channels, when feature for feature it is essentially the same as free or other ad-supported content. As the L.A. Times discovered with its events calendar listings (earlier post), waving a hand over part of your database that's essentially the same as everyone else's is not a viable scheme. With all due respect to the Times' months of research on this matter the markets have driven well ahead of their research's conclusions. News products must be far more robust and user-centric to justify a subscription wall around unbundled or bundled content. The level of sophistication in most media companies' thinking about content packaging and distribution must make a quantum leap over the next two years if major outlets are going to come out smiling at the end of this period of remarkable transformation.