Elsevier Bolsters Pharma Offerings With Windhover Buy

Global STM publisher Elsevier yesterday announced its acquisition of Windhover Information Inc. Windhover is a healthcare business intelligence company that provides analysis and commentary on healthcare business strategy, industry deal making, marketplace trends and medical start-ups. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Among Windhover's products are journals (including IN VIVO and the RPM Report), a database of healthcare industry transactions (Strategic Transactions Database), as well as a series of medical-device and biopharmaceutical partnering and strategy conferences.

Windhover will be integrated into Elsevier's pharma business intelligence unit, which also houses F-D-C Reports Inc. ("The Pink Sheet" and "The Gray Sheet") and the drug development database, Inteleos.

In a statement announcing the deal, Elsevier notes that the Windhover buy is in line with the company's e-health strategy to provide a strong combination of technology and content to its pharmaceutical professional customer base. Windhover is just one more investment Elsevier has made recently in content, workflow tools and e-health services, the statement also notes.

Elsevier really understands the importance of providing customers both the content and tools to accomplish their goals. This acquisition represents how knowledgeable Elsevier is about customer needs. Without tools and analysis, content's value is truly limited. Companies like Windhover can really help organizations like Elsevier provide even more value. Expect Elsevier to further bolster its content and tools capabilities with additional acquisitions.

Grey House Goes to Washington

Grey House Publishing and Penn Hill Publications last week announced the acquisition of Hudson's Washington News Media Contacts Directory. Grey House will publish the 2008 edition of the directory, along with a new companion directory, Washington Associations Contacts Directory, this month.

The 2008 edition is the 41st for Hudson's Washington News Media Contacts Directory, which contains information about more than 4,000 contacts within Washington DC's newspapers, syndicates, radio contacts, magazines and newsletters. The directory's information is contained in sections, such as state-by-state listings of radio, TV stations and newspapers in Washington, news bureaus, specialized news services and syndicates, Canadian and foreign media, freelance writers and photographers, as well as general and specialized magazines, periodicals and newsletters.

The Washington Associations Contacts Directory contains listings for associations in the Washington, DC metro area, including Virginia and Maryland. It covers nearly 100 different subjects, from aviation, education, biotechnology and telecommunications, for individuals seeking contacts at Washington, DC-area non-profit entities. Each listing includes complete contact information, key contacts, the association's publications, email addresses, web sites and a description of the association.

The newly acquired Hudson directory will fit nicely with Grey House's business directory segment, which already serves a variety of business customers in a wide range of industries. In essence, Grey House has created a sub-segment of Washington-related information with the simultaneous release of Hudson's Washington News Media Contacts Directory and the Washington Associations Contacts Directory. Launching a new directory to serve as a companion to its new acquisition really shows Grey House's commitment to this space. Grey House has targeted a large customer base for these directories: associations, businesses, professionals, educators, public relations firms, embassies, government offices, labor unions, consultants, researchers and libraries.

Chances are that these customers who are initially interested in one book will be enticed to purchase both and Grey House has addressed that. Each directory is available for purchase separately (Hudson's for $289 online; $329 online/print combination; $289 for print; Associations for $200 online and $250 for online/print; $150 for print) and bundled as a print set for $375.

It will be interesting to see how successful these books are and if Grey House will add new titles to this subject area any time soon.

Information Wants to be Good

I have been saying loudly for years now that ultimately there would be a flight to quality on the web, at least where data is concerned. My reasoning is pretty simple: data you can't depend on is somewhere between useless and dangerous.

A few weeks back, I wrote about a personal peeve of mine: the number of sites that include the island nation of Palau in their drop down lists of U.S. states. How did this happen? Lots of programmers grabbing the first list of states they could find free somewhere online to save the data entry hassle. This example is mildly humorous, but what if the list being propagated was instead missing a few key states? Then you'd have upset users and possibly even lost sales.

A recent article in Newsweek magazine picks up on this theme, suggesting a trend (which - surprise - some are already labeling Web 3.0) of expert, vetted, trusted data coming back into fashion. Call it a flight to quality.

The article takes particular aim at the poor quality of much of user-generated content being generated, but also notes that information overload is putting a new premium on the short answer as opposed to the full answer. Charlotte Beal, a strategist at research firm Iconoculture, points to growing consumer "choice fatigue" and "fear of bad advice." She also notes sagely that "People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information." This sentiment is doubly true for data.

It's a fascinating change in the online Zeitgeist if Web 2.0, which celebrated clever feats of programming prowess has suddenly given way to Web 3.0, a celebration of the human editor. It's also great news for those of us who still have a human editor or two on the payroll, and as importantly, trusted brands to certify the quality of their work.

Labels: information quality, Web 2.0, web 3.0

Open Search at Yahoo

Yahoo made, I think, a rather intriguing announcement last week that didn't get a lot of attention: it's going to move to "an open search approach." Simply stated, this means that site owners will be able to deliver to Yahoo exactly the information they want to appear in Yahoo search results. Best of all, Yahoo isn't even charging site owners for all this additional power and exposure in the belief this will radically increase the user experience it delivers.

Leaving aside all the nitty-gritty technical details, Yahoo will allow site owners to effectively pre-package information in an intelligent way for display in Yahoo search results. This could be interesting for a wide range of publishers, particularly advertising- based publishers, who would benefit through additional eyeballs on their ad-supported content. This could also offer intriguing opportunities to database publishers because this new approach will allow you to selectively pull data from your database - content that typically isn't indexed at all by search engines, and push it to Yahoo for direct integration into search results pages.

Let's also acknowledge the big "gotcha" in this program: users have to explicitly indicate that they want to see your deep data in their search results. You'll be able to put a button on your site that users can click to enable your deeper content in their Yahoo search results. Stated another way, users will have to already know about you and like your content before they'll be able to see your enhanced content embedded in their Yahoo search results. That means open search at Yahoo isn't about attracting new users to your content, but rather getting existing users to view your content more often.

The real excitement to me is that this is likely the beginning of a trend. The search business has really moved past the old battle of who has indexed the most pages to a new battleground of features and functionality. Yahoo may be onto something bigger than it realizes here. If it gets a good response to this new approach, it's got every incentive as the distant second player in the business to push the envelope. And that could lead to some breakthrough opportunities for those of us who would like a nice showcase for our deep and useful data.

Labels: yahoo

ICIS Acquires Heren Energy Ltd.

Commodity market information provider ICIS this week acquired Heren Energy Ltd. (ICIS is a unit of Reed Business Information UK). Heren Energy is a European gas, power and carbon market information provider.

The deal is expected ICIS to broaden its geographic scope of international energy markets. In addition, it should yield great global sales opportunities for Heren, which provides independent price assessments and indices to wholesale gas and power markets in Europe.

According to a statement announcing the deal, ICIS officials noted that the deal will enable ICIS to expand beyond petrochemicals into additional energy markets. ICIS expects to leverage the strong Heren brand name with its strengths in price reporting, online content delivery and web marketing to yield a more robust offering for the market.

As the energy market continues to garner much attention, this seems to be an ideal time for ICIS to increase its presence in this space. And, by selecting an established player such as Heren, ICIS (and Reed) will be able to make an immediate impact. Look for Heren to grow its name in the market even further, through momentum it will likely gain from the powerful resources Reed always brings to the table.

Labels: Heren Energy, ICIS, reed-elsevier