Financial Times: Try, Try, Try
March 20, 2009
Flashback. FT.com year 2005. I was a paying subscriber. I got a user name and a password. I logged on. Ran a query and the system timed out. Flash forward to 2007. FT.com licenses Fast Search & Transfer. I tested the system. Slow. I was asked to test a semantic system under consideration by the Financial Times. Useful but slow, slow, slow. Now the Financial Times has tapped another point and click vendor for a “deep” search experience. Time out. The Financial Times, arguably one of the two bigger franchises in business information, has been a laggard in online search for quite a while. The FT’s parent owns a chunk of the Economist, another blue chip in business information. I was a subscriber to * both * the print and online editions until late 2007. Why did I drop these must read news sources? Too much hassle. I hope the FT’s new system moves from the “deep” to the daylight. I hope the FT monetizes successfully its content. I hope that I will be able to play in the World Cup, but I am a realist and recognize that hope not mean accomplishment. If you are cheerleading for a dead tree outfit that once owned a wax museum, read the Guardian’s “Financial Times Launches Business-Focused Deep Search Service” here by Kevin Anderson. The article included a useful description of what the FT hopes to do with indexing:
The service allows users to search easily by news topic, organisation, person, place or theme. If a user searches for stories about business in China, the search can quickly be refined to cities in China, showing stories about Beijing, Shanghai or Hubei. Greenleaf described this as a “know before you click” model so that users can see related topics and the number of stories available for each sub-topic. In addition to automatic tagging, Newssift editors have also added other relationships to the service relevant to their business audience so that if someone looks for news about Ford Motor Company, they can also see related content from Ford suppliers.
This type of metatagging is useful, but it is computationally and human intensive. But the main difference between this most recent try in FT’s quest to develop an online service that makes up for the precipitous loss of revenue from its traditional dead tree business is the economy. Too late. I wish the FT team success, but I don’t think this most recent service will deliver the cash needed to get the ship squared away for even rougher seas ahead. Red ink ahead in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, March 20, 2009
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