Factiva, Biz360, Cymfony - all in the same space?

After attending the Factiva Forum in London today, it's clear that Factiva is now making serious moves into the media analytics (mainstream media, blogs etc) space. What were once providers of content are now offering added value services based on text mining technologies. As I mentioned in a previous post, I think it will just be a matter of time before Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google (or "GYM" as Factiva like to call them) adds an analytics layer to its search capabilities. What's interesting is how their service will affect companies such as Biz360 and Cymfony who already incorporate feeds from Factiva into their offerings. It seems that over the past couple of years Factiva has evesdropped on their practices and have decided to offer competing products. The advantage Factiva has is that many organizations already have a Factiva subscription. They would then simply have to pay for an analytics layer on top. Simple.

However, after speaking with some folk at the forum and having been around the block a few times with this kind of technology, it's clear to me that it doesn't matter how innovatively information is sliced and diced, visualized, clustered, taxonomized(?) - the "So what?" question inevitably comes up. Quite rightly so. These technologies do not stand up on their own. They have to become more of an integrated offering taking into account market research/marketing, product development, PR and communications data.

That aside, I applaud Factiva for entering into this space. It's going to be an interesting year ahead...