Google Finance - Cool but lacking

Many of us at Factiva have been checking out the latest offering from that search company that rhymes with Zoogle. And I have to say, Google Finance is darn slick. Those Flash-base stock charts are very nice. Right now, however it just doesn't have enough content to make it a serious contender in the corporate-information-search market.

Certainly this was launched (in beta) as a catch-up with the likes of Yahoo! Finance and they're no doubt checking it out now. But I'm sure our friends at Hoover's are also checking it out closely because it probably will be trying to eat away at their base -- the small shops that need cheap, accurate corporate info. Hoovers and other companies that charge their clients for business information (like Factiva, certainly) are going to have to continue to differentiate on content and on services such as integration and consulting. I think corporations will continue to want to get the info the need into their end-users' work flow.

"Free" is good enough for some, but not likely good enough for most of the enterprise clients who need high-quality business information and often need it integrated into their workflow.

Sadrhino Joins Factiva on line

I've yet to figure out who the rhino is and why he's sad, but I do know that Sadrhino- the Web log with horns is the latest Factiva employee blog and one with a lot of promise. Jim Muntone is a recent hire of ours and, methinks, a great addition to our our user-design team. He brings a fresh perspective and great experience (not saying we don't already have such things, mind you) to our user interface team. I'm looking forward to reading what he covers on Sadrhino.

Executive Decision: The Importance of Corporate Reputation

Factiva's CMO, Alan Scott, gets some more ink around the hot issue of corporate reputation and blogs:

"There are millions of blogs and message boards worldwide and any one of them can affect your organization or brand. To fully manage corporate reputation, companies need to pay close attention to what is being said not only in the media, but in blogs, message boards and online media, too."

(Note Executive Decision editors: "Boston-based"Factiva? And I think the WSJ recently stated there are 35 million blogs, not 3.5 milion. Do they not cover fact-checking in J-school any more?)

Speed Dating for Marketers

I just left the World Trade Group's Global Marketing Executive Summit in Myrtle Beach (BTW, posting this on free wireless access in MB airport!). This event is an example of a fairly new kind of trade show. It gives vendors, like Factiva, the chance to have several one-on-one meetings with (ideally) well-qualified prospects. The vendors sign up to meet specific prospects and the attendees sign up to talk to specific vendors. Not quite a frenetic as speed dating, but the same idea.

I think this is a great alternative to the typical trade-show-floor experience where we all stand around handing our stress balls trying to give demos of our products to people who probably aren't interested and who aren't high enough up the food chain to be able to pay for them.

While I think this event was generally a good one for Factiva, I was a bit disappointed with qualifications of some of the attendees. Many were not "executives", some weren't right for what we have to offer and at least a few were just there (shocking) for the free trip.

Certainly the success of a show like this is directly tied to those who attend and vendors have to put their faith in the company organizing the show that they will deliver the prospects (partially with the allure of a free golf vacation at a nice resort on the beach). Certainly there are no guarantees and we, like most, are probably very happy to come away with even just a handful of good leads.