FreePint Report: Product Review of ... - Dow Jones & Company

FreePint Report: Product Review of Factiva

December 2014

Product Review of Factiva

In-depth, independent review of the product, plus links to related resources

"...has some 32,000 sources spanning all forms of content of which thousands are not available on the free web. Some source archives go back to 1951..."



? Free Pint Limited 2014

Contents

Introduction & Contact Details

4

Sources - Content and Coverage

5

Technology - Search and User Interface

8

Technology - Outputs, Analytics, Alerts, Help

18

Value - Competitors, Development & Pricing

29

FreePint Buyer's Guide: News

33

Other Products

35

About the Reviewer

36

^ Back to Contents |

- 2 -

? Free Pint Limited 2014

About this Report

Reports

FreePint raises the value of information in the enterprise, by publishing articles, reports and resources that support information sources, information technology and information value. A FreePint Subscription provides customers with full access to everything we publish. Customers can share individual articles and reports with anyone at their organisations as part of the terms and conditions of their license. Some license levels also enable customers to place materials on their intranets. To learn more about FreePint, visit

Disclaimer

FreePint Report: Product Review of Factiva (ISBN 978-1-78123-181-4) is a FreePint report published by Free Pint Limited.

The opinions, advice, products and services offered herein are the sole responsibility of the contributors. Whilst all reasonable care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the publication, the publishers cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions.

Except as covered by subscriber or purchaser licence agreement, this publication MAY NOT be copied and/or distributed without the prior written agreement of the publishers. Product names used in this report are for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners. Free Pint Limited disclaims any and all rights in those marks. All rights reserved.

This version of the report was published in December 2014 and was accurate as of that date.

Contact Information

Free Pint Limited 4-6 Station Approach, Ashford, Middlesex, TW15 2QN, United Kingdom

Registered Office: Delaport Coach House, Lamer Lane, Wheathampstead, Herts, AL4 8RQ Registered Number: 3754481

Telephone: 01784 605000 International: +44 1784 605000 Email: support@ Web:

^ Back to Contents |

- 3 -

? Free Pint Limited 2014

Introduction & Contact Details

By Andrew Grave View author biography

Factiva is the premium global news aggregation solution from Dow Jones.

Factiva is aimed at sophisticated users such as information professionals and also at end users. Corporate customers can also elect to take a number of cheaper Factiva Reader subscriptions which allows users to read news alerts and searches generated by other users.

News Corp's 10-K filing states that Factiva products are used by 1.1 million users around the world.

Factiva has some 32,000 sources spanning all forms of content of which thousands are not available on the free web. Some source archives go back to 1951.

In 2013, Factiva made its own news headlines which were reported extensively in FreePint. A bold attempt to subsume Factiva alongside other Dow Jones products into a single-platform, single-price approach called DJX was not universally welcomed by customers. Corporate clients began to turn to Factiva's competitors and institutional revenues fell. Instigator and CEO Lex Fenwick left the company in January 2014 to be replaced by interim and now permanent CEO William Lewis.

Whilst DJX continues to be marketed, sold and used as a comprehensive content solution, the ability to purchase Factiva as a stand-alone product was reintroduced in May 2014.

By reverting to previous commercial terms, Dow Jones also aimed to bring more flexibility to its product and is now concentrating on meeting the needs of its core user base. It has made strong enhancements in content and functionality since the last FreePint product review in December 2012. Factiva now incorporates the former Companies & Executives module which we reviewed in September 2014. FreePint subscribers can read the separate review here.

Additional Factiva Services

Factiva Reader: This is a corporate licence permitting companies to share content across an organisation to those employees who do not have Factiva accounts. Typical uses include Factiva content shared via intranets and newsletters.

My Company Today: This comprises a daily collection of news stories tailored to a company. Areas covered include mentions of the company, key industry issues and news on your company's competitors. It can be delivered directly as a newsletter or via a feed.

This chapter is also published as an article in your FreePint Subscription: Factiva (Introduction; Contact Details)

Click to login now and read online ?

Contact Details

Dow Jones is a New York-headquartered company with further key offices in London, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Paris and Hong Kong. It has offices in over 50 countries and is part of News Corporation.

Dow Jones & Co. 1211 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10036 USA

Contact: Brian Gelinas, executive director product management Email: brian.gelinas@ Website: Twitter: @dowjones

Office locations Contact form Customer support

^ Back to Contents |

- 4 -

? Free Pint Limited 2014

Sources - Content and Coverage

One of Factiva's long-term strengths has been its extremely wide range of content. It currently offers more than 32,000 sources in 28 languages from nearly every country in the world.

Content is updated continuously 24 hours a day. In terms of timeliness, more than 4,000 of these sources are available through Factiva on the date of publication by the original source. Factiva's archive goes back to 1951.

Factiva states that thousands of its key sources are not available on the free web.

Factiva remains the only database to offer the combined collection of licensed Dow Jones Newswires, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters newswires. In addition, publications from News UK (The Times, The Sun, The Sunday Times and The Sun on Sunday) remain exclusive to Factiva.

I asked Jonathan Palmer, Factiva's head of content, to explain Factiva's approach to content. Jonathan explained that Factiva takes a licensed approach to content. As an increasing amount of content goes behind paywalls, Factiva will try and get that content. Other platforms may have some content from the same publications, but may not have all of it.

He says that the team is actively seeking out content from the major metropolitan areas that will be important growth generators well beyond 2015. This enables Factiva's clients to have the best possible coverage of these areas directly from the most authoritative and original sources.

Jonathan also stressed the importance of Factiva's global licensing team. Its representatives are based in every time zone, an advantage not enjoyed by its peers. The team has developed good relationships with local publishers because of this. Factiva has recently built up its Asia Pacific Team.

Social Media Content

As well as its substantial paid-for content, Factiva also contains curated content from more than 1.6 million blogs, from more than 600,000 message boards and opinion and review sites, and from Twitter. Factiva also uploads hundreds of thousands of businessrelevant tweets daily. These tweets are based around Factiva's top 30+ industry categories, as well as the top 1,500 companies by revenue globally. Dow Jones has a team dedicated to identifying and adding Twitter handles relevant to those industries and companies. This helps ensure that the tweets are relevant and reliable.

Examples of Factiva's sources are shown in Table 1.

^ Back to Contents |

- 5 -

? Free Pint Limited 2014

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download