The best detailed discussion to date on what’s happening with all the changes occurring with Thomson’s breaking up, moving, and selling some of its market research, analyst research, and news databases from its Thomson Business Intelligence (TBI) division can be found in Barbara Quint’s article in the January 22nd Information Today NewsBreaks here

That article closes with this quote from analyst John Blossom:

Unfortunately Thomson Business Intelligence never quite coalesced into the integrated offerings for market verticals and functional verticals that other business information offerings have formed over the past few years. Instead the individual cultures and architectures of each of the product offerings under the umbrella were never put aside in full and wound up being an ‘old’ Thomson division of stand-alone offerings under a common sales umbrella. … Best of luck to everyone in this deal, in the end better things are bound to happen as a result of this move.

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Like appending every scandal with the word “gate” to it, now it seems that every new approach or revision to anything at all these days gets the “2.0″ moniker. Hey, I mean, did you know that now there are even socks 2.0?

But one area where there’s clearly a legit use of the “2.0″ buzzword (even if you don’t like the whole Web 2.0 moniker) is in the area of market research. Traditional market research has always been about processes like in-person focus groups, mail and phone surveys, quantitative data collection and so on. While all of this is still important, these days the interesting action is how market researchers can collect unsolicited and naturalistic conversation occurring on the Web, as described in this recent New York Times article. (This will all be part of the book I’m working on titled The Art of Strategic Listening, on how to do credible market research and track emerging trends by paying careful attention to discussions on blogs)

Here’s an interesting take on what it means for market research to be going in the 2.0 direction, it’s called, Research 2.0., written by Ray Poynter on his pretty cool blog The Future Place.

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Big changes happening right now at Thomson–this notice to customers was just posted this morning on the always outstanding BUSLIB business librarians’ discussion group. I plan to follow up on this with an updated piece in The Information Advisor.

There’s always lots of shifting around of properties, products, and databases at Thomson, but this one sounds even more dramatic that usual. I imagine that just like newspaper and journal publishers, fee-based information databases like these have to be making radical adjustments in order to survive in the age of the Internet, and with Web 2.0, and this is one response.

On a similar theme, I’m planning on interviewing a key executive at Dialog over the next week or so to ask how that firm feels it is adjusting to the realities of research in the Internet age. I’ll post some excerpts and general themes here at Intelligent Agent.

———————————————————————————————-

Dear Valued Customer,
Please note the following important news regarding your subscriptions to TBI Broker Research & Insite, TBI Market Research, NewsEdge and TBI News Research.

After carefully analyzing our product portfolio, we have decided to realign specific services within Business Intelligence Services. Our goal is to best align our products and resources to the markets and customers we serve.

TBI Broker Research & Insite: We have determined that our Broker Research and Insite services are best aligned with Thomson Financial, the Thomson business unit that is a recognized leader in financial information and business intelligence. We are confident that the ongoing transition to Thomson Financial will be a positive one with no interruption in your TBI Broker Research and Insite services. If you have any questions, please continue to contact the Business Intelligence Services customer service team until further notice from Thomson Financial.

TBI Market Research and NewsEdge: We are selling Market Research (Profound®) and NewsEdge. We are currently in discussions with potential buyers and will keep you apprised of our progress. We want you to know that our primary goal is to ensure ongoing value of these innovative services. When appropriate, we will share more information on the sale of Market Research (Profound®) and NewsEdge. Until then, we will continue to provide full support and development resources to ensure that you continue to receive the best possible service.

TBI News Research: We have chosen to discontinue the News Research service effective December 31, 2007. Our goal is to minimize any disruption and inconvenience to you. We are committed to supporting News Research for the remainder of the year, and we will work with you toward a successful transition.

We are confident all transitions will be positive, with no interruption in your TBI, Insite or NewsEdge services.

If you have any specific questions, please call customer service:
North America 1-800-477-4300
France/Germany/UK +00-800- 85785700
Worldwide 1-651-687-7273

Thank you for the opportunity to serve you.

* * * * * * * * * *

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Okay, I’m going out on a bit of a limb here, but in piecing a few things together that have emerged from my research into sentiment analysis natural language processing (NLP) software, my bet is that Factiva, which is beta testing some sentiment analysis software from an unnamed third party for its Factiva Insight product but won’t say who it is, may be considering integrating the sentiment detection product from Corpora Software. Corpora Software is a very interesting UK firm that offers a variety of information overload and sentiment analysis software.

A few months ago that firm issued a press release that stated:

” WE HAVE ENTERED INTO A STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP TO SUPPLY A SECOND MAJOR news organisation with our software. This will be embedded into their
global infrastructure in a deal worth a seven-figure US dollar amount to
Corpora…”

” WE CAN CONFIRM TODAY THAT WE HAVE WON A SIMILAR CONTRACT WITH FACTIVA (a Dow Jones and Reuters company), a major global business intelligence
provider, worth an initial $590k.”

__________________________________________________________________

Based on the above, and reading between the lines in several conversations I’ve had with vendors and analysts in this field, I’m guessing that we’ll soon hear about a deal on Sentiment from Factiva referring to its deal with Corpora.

I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve learned about Corpora’s approach to sentiment detection, (they have an excellent white paper on their approach) and think that if indeed this is the vendor Factiva has chosen, that it will be well served.

I’ll be posting more on sentiment detection software again…it’s a fascinating topic that is moving very quickly and getting a much higher profile all the time.

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