EContent Magazine reported today on a new product from Alacra called Pulse Platform:
On February 18, Alacra announced the rollout of its Pulse Platform, which identifies, aggregates, and presents business “events.” The company will offer freemium versions of individual Pulse offerings, which will be supported by advertising and the sale of related premium content from the Alacra Store, as well as enhanced premium editions.
The first application on the Pulse Platform is Street Pulse:
Alacra Street Pulse uses the freemium business model. The site http://pulse.alacra.com is a completely free version, available without registration on the open web. The free version is supported through advertising and the sale of contextually relevant credit and investment research through the Alacra Store (www.alacrastore.com). A professional version that contains no advertising is available for license, and includes advanced features including watch lists, email alerts, sharing and advanced search capabilities.
Alacra has long been a favorite of mine because of the various products and services they provide in the following areas:
- Aggregation/Integration (my personal favorite)
- Briefing/Pitch books
- Compliance
- Corporate Executive and Corporate Board of Director information
- Current awareness
- Portals (another favorite)
- Premium Content
As mentioned above, with StreetPulse, Alacra is offering what they call a freemium service defined as a “business model in which the owner or service provider offers basic features to users at no cost and charges a premium for supplemental or advanced features.”
~ Nina Platt
A recent press release issued by Practising Law Institute and Knowledge Mosaic LLC describes PLI-XChange in more detail than PLI’s recent press release (see Practising Law Institute (PLI) Announces PLI-XChange) about the same service. In this press release PLI announces it’s partnership with Knowledge Mosaic in that their content will be used by PLI to support student learning.
According to the press release, PLI-XChange “promises to revolutionize continuing legal education by offering an immersive, dynamic environment that combines enterprise social networking with a steady stream of real-time content.” It goes on to state PLI’s goal to allow legal professionals “to network with PLI faculty and PLI attendees to share ideas, create new business relationships, and engage in peer-to-peer learning.” PLI Course Attendees will receive access to the system when they register for a course.
Finally, the press release describes Knowledge Mosaic’s contribution:
The content provided by Knowledge Mosaic, updated daily, will feature salient worldwide news articles and editorial commentary; real-time news feeds from various regulatory bodies; court cases and enforcement actions pulled from PACER and associated web sites (e.g., the Department of Justice); lists of new and recent patents granted to specific U.S. companies or associated with specific representing law firms; expert legal analysis in the form of law firm memos from several hundred North American firms; and the best and most relevant postings culled from a network of over 25 widely read legal bloggers. PLI XChange participants are invited to engage these voices and to add their own to the discussion, by contributing questions, comments, even instant messages to fellow participants and faculty members.
The November issue of VIP Magazine published by Free Pint LImited includes a review, The Big Three Revisited, of the news products from Dialog, Dow Jones and LexisNexis. The annual report written by Pam Foster and Jill Fenton includes a the product review of NewsRoom, Factiva and Nexis along with a user survey. The press release describes the survey and review and provides the following highlights:
SURVEY
- Over 160 users responded to the survey, representing organisations the United Kingdom, European Union, North America, Australia and other parts of the world. Sectors represented include finance, consulting, legal, education and government.
- Most respondents subscribe to more than one product; 73% subscribe to Nexis from LexisNexis, 67% to Dow Jones Factiva and 34% to Dialog NewsRoom. Respondents turn most frequently to Factiva Dow Jones (average of 3.25 on a 4-point scale among those who use the product), followed by Nexis (2.96), and then Dialog NewsRoom (1.94).
- Respondents are highly experienced users. A third have more than 8 years’ experience with the products and another third have between 3 and 8 years’ experience.
- Highest satisfaction with features and functions of products include:
- Value from Product: highest average ratings for all three vendors
- Effective Search: also high average ratings for all three vendors.
- Dow Jones Factiva and Nexis from LexisNexis received high marks for scope of content.
- Dialog NewsRoom outpaced the other two products for the usefulness of its training.
- Lowest satisfaction was recorded for:
- Communication: All three vendors scored on the lower end for useful communication with users .
- Training: Respondents gave vendors lower marks for training that meets user needs.
PRODUCT REVIEW
- Among the macro trends identified this year:
- Increase in web-base sources, particularly blogs
- Contraction in some other high value sources — FT and Harvard Business Review, among others, have made their content more difficult to obtain through aggregators so that they can have a closer connection to their customers
- Emphasis on specialisms, such as local resources or content from far-flung geographies
- Continuing efforts to incorporate easy-to-use features without undermining the power of detailed searching.
Subscriptions of VIP magazine are available with discounts to SLA, fResource, and AIIP members. Single issues are available for purchase including the November issue that contains this product review and survey. The review and survey can also be purchased separately.
