Publishing, Information Industry, and Information Management
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WashingtonPost.com Builds on Impressive StartWashingtonPost.com has long been a gold standard of US newspaper websites. It has won numerous awards, and it ranks highest in local penetration of its market among newspaper websites, having fought the good fight with Yahoo!, Google, and others for “local” readers. Still, the Post struggles, like all newspaper companies. While it is growing significantly online, its ad revenue growth has slowed and its audience doesn’t spend as much time on the site as the Post would like or as its ad revenue needs require. WashingtonPost.com is an example of a relatively successful news site in the throes of continual change. In Outsell’s opinion, all news publishers can learn from its initiatives.
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2008 Library Market Size, Share & Forecast ReportThis report focuses on libraries’ buying power and the trends affecting content spending by this $22.5 billion market. It is the first report of its kind to analyze the global library market for all types of libraries and information centers: traditional physical libraries as well as non-traditional centralized digital information centers and other kinds of centralized content management functions. This analysis provides useful total available market (TAM) information for publishers and information providers who sell into this marketplace, and is an essential tool for publishers and information providers that target the dynamic and changing library market and seek to understand its key trends and issues.
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Corporate Executive Board: Banking on Best PracticesCorporate Executive Board (CEB) has been the industry’s darling for many years, growing 20%-30% every quarter. It created a syndicated, replicable business model to harness corporate best practice information, and it has been a leader in demonstrating the value of targeting professionals’ roles in the corporate marketplace. The company was an early pioneer in harnessing peer-to-peer content creation as a precursor to what we now see in social networking markets. At 2007 revenues of $533 million, CEB is nearly half the size of Gartner. It saw record growth over a number of years; recently its growth rate has become more even and comparable to the overall market's. This report looks in detail at Corporate Executive Board as the company and product lines mature, and forecasts where Outsell expects the company to go from here.
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Legal Research Market Disruptors: Open Law Initiatives Join Earlier Generation of US Case Law AlternativesA flurry of activity among new and existing providers of US case law is raising anew the question of whether bigger change is afoot in the legal research space. This new level of activity is worth examining, not just for the effect these players will have on commercial legal research giants Thomson West, LexisNexis, and Wolters Kluwer, but also for identifying potential growth in end-user markets outside traditional legal research markets in the legal industry. This report takes an in-depth look at six companies: AltLaw.org, Collexis, Fastcase, Justia.com, PreCYdent, and VersusLaw.
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Zvents' Local Push Is One to Watch“Local” has long been the newspaper companies’ turf. The web has partly unraveled that long-standing relationship as Yahoo!, Google, AOL, MSN, Topix, and others all produce local sections and increasingly try to attract local advertisers. Start-up Zvents, three years old, now powers more than 150 US newspaper websites’ “local events” sections, with more than 100 additional sites in the pipeline. It’s the biggest local events vendor for the US regional newspaper industry, and is preparing to launch a new “paid listings” product in April 2008. That enlarges the definition of local events to include advertising itself. Outsell believes the new product, built on Zvents’ existing base, demands the attention of publishers eager for internet ad growth in their local communities.
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Digital Content: Analyzing Demand in the Postsecondary Education MarketA tectonic shift in content use is underway in postsecondary education. Both content adopters and suppliers are in the early phase of the continuum from 100% print content to a significant role for digital content. As postsecondary instructors and other content decisionmakers are increasingly interested in employing new digital formats to enhance teaching and learning, digital content providers, technology vendors, and other companies involved in bringing digital content to colleges and universities are simultaneously shaping a new higher education environment. The most pressing challenges for companies participating in this market are to assess the market opportunities, understand customer requirements, modify existing business strategies, and bring compelling offerings to the market. This report focuses on the demand-side of the market: faculty use and planned use of digital content. It uses primary research of faculty content adopters to identify perceptions and trends that will help shape supplier strategies for digital content.
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Vertical Search: Market Size, Share & ForecastVertical search continues to deliver what big search engines miss, and the resulting financial potential remains attractive. Outsell estimates the total ad-supported B2B trade information vertical search market at $518 million in 2007. Our research shows that the user and advertiser needs addressed by vertical search services remain significantly underserved by Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL. But many B2B trade publishers and information providers that have launched vertical search services have been slow to do what’s necessary to use vertical search as a springboard to seed a fast-growing virtuous circle.
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End-User Update 2008: New Findings from Outsell’s User Profile ResearchUser-centric solutions are the name of the game in today’s information marketplace. Building an information solution or environment that speaks personally to a user in a specific role or industry and mirrors that user’s workflow requires targeted marketing and product development. While it takes extra time and effort to create user profiles and formulate personas that represent specific user segments, the resulting solutions will engender greater loyalty and, as a result, offer a greater return on investment. This report provides a foundation for understanding users’ information profiles and offers an idea of the kinds of user profile data available in Outsell’s Information Markets & Users Database.
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Collexis: Disrupting Search with Vertical Visualization ToolsCollexis is a provider of disruptive vertical search and visualization solutions, demonstrating to publishers how these services can deliver additional value to end users. The Collexis story also contains lessons for publishers about how to find new revenue opportunities by partnering to produce value-added products, and a cautionary tale that software companies can prey on publishing houses to achieve growth. Its story further demonstrates that by understanding the benefits users seek from technology, software companies can grow by building applications using their own tools (if you are an engineer, read “bootstrapping revenue streams”).
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Playing the News Video RevolutionFor news publishers, the video revolution is a promise of new revenue potential and a further threat to a business being taken apart at the seams by digital publishing. As news users have come to expect video on their news sites, the sites have begun to respond. They took small steps in 2007, building ad sales programs around video, tackling infrastructure questions, and determining staff roles. In addition, content software companies and network distribution companies have addressed publisher needs, competing for their business. As 2008 dawns, business initiatives are moving beyond trials, promising real revenue and new user engagement.
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