Inform Technologies Makes “More Like This” Less Hard
Important Details: Contact. Content. Context. Those three C’s tell us a lot about the Internet news business. Publishers produce the content, but have too little contact with the users, who have found search aggregator sites largely more appealing. As the recent Google/Associated Press deal shows, companies are working on that issue.
Context has been an equally devilish problem. How does a reader find more stories like the one she’s reading? Stories from same publisher? Stories from other publishers? Blogs? Columns? Old stories, found in archives? Relevant photos and information graphics? Too often, news presentation is fairly flat, with little context offered, forcing readers to click off, searching (through Google, Yahoo!, and MSN – "GYM") for more. It’s not a new problem; many companies offering solutions have come and gone since the mid-’90s.
Now we see new movement to fill that gap, as technologies improve and ad models multiply the value of multiplying page views.
This week, Inform Technologies relaunched its news aggregation site. Inform initially launched to noisy press last fall, talking about taking on Google News and Yahoo! News. Its business-to-consumer product stirred few fingertips from their habits, with users complaining about the site’s complexity and poor usability. Now it has brought its not-inconsiderable technology to publishers directly, going business-to-business.
In a nutshell, Inform is saying this to publishers: Reclaim your birthright. You used to be at the center of the news experience, and you can be again! Take a look at the Inform site. You can see why it won few points from consumers. Like the first-generation consumer news aggregation plays (and that’s what Google News and Yahoo! News plainly are), it just reads like lists. And none of us need more to-do lists. But there’s a lot there, and it’s clear what a smart news site with talented editors and designers could do with the technology and feeds.
Find more stories like the one you’re on, either by embedding links within stories or using "related articles" boxes or enriching search results. Add relevant blog, audio, and video links. Create a bigger experience for users, one that might both encourage more page views on a publisher’s own site and push the news site user to think of that site also as a great jumping-off spot, a more central part of their Web day. You can see the technology in action on the timely Mel Gibson page.
So far, only NewsOK, the site of The Oklahoman, has the service up. Users may have to register with the site before seeing it in action. Inform’s big partner to come is the often-early-adopter WashingtonPost.com, which deserves kudos for trying all kinds of things to bring the big, bold world to its customers. In addition, the Huffington Post and the New York Sun have signed up.
Inform CEO Peter Longo, a veteran of Ziff-Davis, says his deep-processing technology is without peer, and that it takes on "the next huge chunk of unstructured data" – news – tagging it into the kinds of people, places, ideas, and categories that readers want.
But Inform isn’t the only provider that has recognized the problem – and the opportunity.
Clickability, long in the market with tools for e-mailing stories, is offering "Related Stories" widgets as part of its evolving publishing platform. CEO John Girard says that the boxes provide click-throughs of 2.5 percent-6 percent for publishers, including Time.
Topix has also been experimenting with such boxes, offering the technology to two of its three owners, Tribune and McClatchy, with related articles found on some pages on those publishers’ sites. In addition, Pluck’s SiteLife product offers publishers the ability to create a contextual "My" experience.
Don’t expect GYM companies to be left behind. Yahoo! is talking with publishers about providing such contextual tools from its own toolbox, and Google’s various search box appliances have touched on offering contextual tools as well.
In Outsell’s Opinion: Getting publishers to buy into the programs has been slow – too slow. Why? Publishers like the idea of offering contextual stories, as long as they are the publishers’ own stories – which helps re-circulation but usually doesn’t meet readers’ needs. Getting publishers to link off to other sites – sites they don’t own – is a work in progress, but publishers seem to be getting the point that walled gardens are wilting fast. Better to be publisher and good pointer to other great content than to stew inside the walls and wait for the guests to arrive.