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

[Pages:36]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

Factiva

Sources - Content and Coverage | December 2014

Table 1: Source Examples

Type of Sources Examples

Newspapers

Same-day and archival coverage of The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, The Times, the Guardian, Les Echos, B?rsen-Zeitung, South China Morning Post, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Straits Times, Yomiuri Shimbun HQ & Local Edition, The Irish Times and local newspapers from every corner of the globe.

Newswires

More than 450 continuously updating newswires, including the exclusive combination of Dow Jones, Reuters, and the Associated Press. Factiva offers more than 700 wires, including the Press Association, Agence France Presse, the Australian Associated Press and other industry press releases, and local newswires.

Magazines

General business and industry must-read publications such as The Economist, Forbes, Newsweek, Finanz & Wirtschaft, L'Express.

Television and Radio Transcripts

BBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, NPR, ABC (Australia), CTV, Deutsche Welle.

Source: Factiva website

The sources by language are listed in Table 2. Please note that whilst these figures are from 2012, we believe they still provide a good illustration of the diversity of Factiva's sources.

Table 2: Sources by Language

Language

Sources Language

Sources

English

26,124 Hungarian

20

Arabic

243

Italian

385

Bahasa Indonesian 141

Japanese

476

Bahasa Melayu

25

Korean

231

Bulgarian

32

Norwegian

58

Catalan

41

Polish

72

Chinese (Simplified) 895

Portuguese

235

Chinese (Traditional) 494

Russian

1,876

Czech

55

Slovak

24

Danish

75

Spanish

1,214

Dutch

340

Swedish

82

Finnish

52

Thai

8

French

1,435

Turkish

43

German

1,090

Vietnamese 111

Source: FreePint Product Review of December 2012

^ Back to Contents |

- 6 -

? Free Pint Limited 2014

Factiva

Figure 1: Example from Factiva's new author database

Sources - Content and Coverage | December 2014

Storyful

In December 2013, Factiva's ultimate parent company News Corporation purchased social media news agency Storyful (not to be confused with the similar-sounding Storify).

Storyful's strapline is "When everyone is sharing content, Storyful finds the stories worth telling". The Storyful acquisition has given Factiva access to verified video content which it has added to its homepages. Factiva plans to make it searchable in 2015.

Author Database

Another new source incorporated into Factiva is the author database. Key contact details for journalists have now been captured. These can be exported into your contacts and added to lists. An example of the information on an author is shown in Figure 1.

FreePint's View: Sources, Content and Coverage

Factiva is renowned for its news content and it maintains its edge here.

The addition of Storyful-verified videos and author databases are interesting moves and show that Factiva is not standing still on the content front.

The only content weakness from a UK perspective I can highlight is that the major business publication the Financial Times is not included in the standard subscription. In common with Factiva's competitors, this source can be purchased directly from the newspaper itself and then accessed via Factiva.

? Vast range of content ? 32,000 sources in 28

languages

? Sources embrace social media as well as

traditional publications

? Thousands of sources not available on the

free web

? Only database to offer the combined

collection of licensed Dow Jones Newswires, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters newswires

? Financial Times has to be subscribed to

directly, but this is an issue with all news databases.

This chapter is also published as an article in your FreePint Subscription: Factiva (Sources Content & Coverage) Click to login now and read online ?

^ Back to Contents |

- 7 -

? Free Pint Limited 2014

Technology - Search and User Interface

Technology

With a heritage reaching back some 15 years, Factiva has steered a clever line between serving the traditional (but budget-challenged) market of information professionals and broadening its reach to tap the growing end-user market. This year has seen the introduction of many enhancements aimed at information professionals and end users.

The look and feel of the product has continued to keep up with the times and the current offering has a nice modern feel to it. It offers plenty of white space and the use of blue, black and grey lettering is easy on the eye. Recent enhancements have seen the use of more colours deployed in areas such as charting and this is highly effective. However, Factiva does not yet deploy hover boxes which provide additional information when you hover over a word or icon. I feel the offer of these would be helpful. It does deploy these effectively when hovering over news content on some pages.

Search and User Interface

Once you have logged into Factiva and made your language selections, you are presented with a reassuringly straightforward screen. Prominent in the top righthand corner is a green LIVE HELP button which opens up access to a direct messaging service with Factiva's client helpdesk.

The black tabs along the top of the screen provide access to the product's key functions:

Home: the default screen when you login. It provides access to the simpler search tool with the rest of the screen customisable to display news, and intelligence from that news, in a variety of formats which can be tailored to user needs.

Search: delivers access to the traditional Factiva search environment aimed at intense users such as information professionals and access to saved searches.

Analytics: facilitates analysis of news trends and the creation of charts. Alerts: allows these to be viewed, set up and managed. News pages: provide access to three types of news pages which can be set up:

Personal Pages, Group Pages and Factiva Pages. Company/Markets: selects the Companies & Markets module formerly sold

separately as Companies & Executives. This module is now bundled in with Factiva as standard. Please see the FreePint separate review for more about this offering.

Homepage Search

Adopting a deceptively simple approach, the search function looks like a regular web search box but this conceals some clever technology behind it. Typing in a word brings up a suggested list of companies, news subjects (popular terms, eg bribery), executives, regions and key words. The search can then be done using one of the terms or you can continue typing your own search words. This functionality is shown in Figure 2.

^ Back to Contents |

- 8 -

? Free Pint Limited 2014

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

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

Google Online Preview   Download