Factiva: 8,000 publications, 1.5 million subscribers

This week's E-Business Secrets continues my report on the secrets I learned from my private conversations with speakers at the Global eSubscription Symposium, sponsored by the Sandlot Corporation in Salt Lake City on May 15.

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One of the biggest success stories at the symposium was Factiva, a provider of current and archived articles from a wide variety of publications around the world. According to Clare Hart, president and CEO of Factiva, the service offers the full content of some 8,000 publications in 22 languages. More than 1.5 million paid subscribers currently have access to this massive textbase.

More than 80 percent of these subscribers are employees of corporations that pay for bulk subscriptions, Hart says. Factiva focuses its marketing efforts on the largest "Global 4000" companies, she explains. These companies tend to have a large number of "knowledge workers" who need to quickly find facts about business conditions or competitors.

For individual searchers who are not covered by a corporate subscription, Factiva.com offers a variety of tools. Searching a textbase of 6,000 publications called the Archive is free, but seeing the full text of articles costs $2.95.

Factiva is a joint venture owned 50 percent by Dow Jones and 50 percent by Reuters. Launched in 1999, Factiva became profitable within its first two years. The company doesn't reveal the proportion of its revenue that comes from its bulk subscriptions versus its individual paid searches. But the proportion must be high, with 80 percent of its users enjoying corporate memberships.

To persuade the Global 4000 to sign up, Factiva must demonstrate its unique value in the face of the free material that's widely available on the Web. To do this, the service cites studies that bolster Factiva's case. "Of surveyed knowledge workers, 62 percent believe anything is available on the Web," Hart says. "But research shows that more than two-thirds of the publications used most often by knowledge workers do not make their material available on the Web for free."

Of the 29 percent of these publications that do post their content on the Web, Hart continues, half provide access only to selected articles, not entire issues.

Statistics such as these support Factiva's worldwide sales force, with offices in 48 cities in 27 different countries. "Our face-to-face sales force is the primary means of acquiring customers," says Hart. Library associations, advertising agencies, and public relations firms are some of Factiva's best customers, aside from the Global 4000 companies.

Unlike MyFamily.com, which I wrote about last week, Factiva finds that online advertising is not effective to reach its desired audience. Instead, the service has used mostly print advertising in such publications as CIO, Fast Company, Business 2.0, and Competitive Intelligence Magazine, a trade publication.

Despite its impressive number of subscribers, Factiva plans to grow larger still. It announced on May 22 a Factiva Developer's Kit. This would permit your intranet, for example, to provide a front end to Factiva's global news.

A new product is also to be released soon: Factiva Alerts, with 90-plus continuously updating news wires. Hart says this is more news feeds than are available from any other single source. Sounds like an opportunity there.

FACTIVA ANNOUNCEMENT OF DEVELOPER'S KIT:

http://www.factiva.com@n6.be/?4e5d

FACTIVA WHITE PAPER ON FREE VS. FEE-BASED INFORMATION:

http://www.factiva.com@n6.be/?61e5 (requires Acrobat)

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E-BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: TV ON A T-SHIRT

Researchers from France Telecom have developed a material with plastic optical fibres that can be worn on the front of a T-shirt to display images.

Watching your favorite movie on the chest of a friend may be a little while off, but the concept alone is certain to inspire entrepreneurs everywhere.

OPTICAL FIBRES DISPLAY MOVING IMAGES ON T-SHIRTS:

http://www.nature.com@54.vg/?756d

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LIVINGSTON'S TOP 10 NEWS PICKS O' THE WEEK

1. Netflix's success may help other dot-coms raise cash

http://www.sfgate.com@a2.tc/?425

2. Amazon tries mail-order companies for display onsite

http://ecommerce.internet.com@e.la/?80d

3. Study: Online ads slumping no more than offline ads

http://www.electricnews.net@th.gs/?bf5

4. eToys sues Goldman Sachs over IPO allegations

http://www.afr.com@5a0.tc/?fdd

5. Stronger businesses may replace Jupiter Media Metrix

http://www.nytimes.com@31.dk/?13c5

6. TiVo records TV programs without viewers' permission

http://www.theregister.co.uk@836.as/?17ad

7. "Warhol worm" could infect Internet in 15 minutes

http://www.icir.org@a6r.ms/?1b95

8. Learn from the world's smallest site (click link 1)

http://www.guimp.com@3n.be/?1f7d

9. PHP tips: Optimize for resources as well as speed

http://www.phplens.com@54.vg/?2365

10. "Pinhole Spy Camera" uses Flash to teach cool skills

http://www.mod7.com@1c.to/?274d

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WACKY WEB WEEK: "MY PC'S CUP HOLDER ISN'T WORKING"

A spokesman for Gateway Computers swears that a user once called the company's technical support hotline to complain that her teacup kept slipping out of her new PC's cup holder.

The solution? Don't use your sliding CD-ROM tray to hold your teacup.

Then there's the call KitchenAid got from a woman who asked which was her washing machine's best spin cycle to use for drying her lettuce. She then wanted to know how to keep her washer from making her clothes green.

These are just two of the hilarious stories in an excellent Washington Post article on how high-tech companies are reducing the cost of tech-support calls by anticipating the way people will misuse their products.

Amid all the laughs, there are some great lessons in here. For example, because customers won't read manuals (or health benefits books), Horizon Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Jersey actually started calling new members to describe in 15 to 30 minutes the health benefits they are and are not qualified for. Horizon's customer satisfaction rates went up to 85 percent from the high 60s, and its retention rate climbed to 88 percent from around 70. That's real money.

HOW HIGH-TECH COMPANIES ARE CUTTING TECH-SUPPORT COSTS:

http://www.washingtonpost.com@n6.be/?c38d

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E-BUSINESS SECRETS: Our mission is to bring you such useful and thought-provoking information about the Web that you actually look forward to reading your e-mail.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: E-Business Secrets is written by InfoWorld Contributing Editor Brian Livingston (http://SecretsPro.com). Research director is Vickie Stevens. Brian has published 10 books, including:

Windows Me Secrets:

http://www.amazon.com@isbn.at/?0764534939

Windows 2000 Secrets:

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