http://www.newspage.com/NEWSPAGE/nptb-individual.html (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)
Individual offers knowledge workers the smartest, easiest, and most cost-effective way of gaining current awareness in a rapidly changing world. Its customized news products are created by an interactive, self-learning software agent (expert system) that searches a broad spectrum of electronic newswires, newspapers, and trade periodicals to find the articles uniquely relevant to each client. Information selected by the agent for each subscriber is automatically fed into a custom-designed newsletter format, and then delivered via fax, electronic mail, the World Wide Web, or onto enterprise-wide groupware platforms.
Individual places the power of information and electronic communications technologies into the hands of professionals needing the latest news on their business but lacking the resources to scan stacks of periodicals or perform costly, ineffective online searches. Clients use Individual's products to monitor competitors, identify sales opportunities, track product announcements, and to stay abreast of major trends affecting their particular markets.
By transforming the raw streams of electronic data into a single source of actionable knowledge, the company eliminates the problem of "information overload" and empowers organizations and individuals to respond to a dynamic world.
Individual, Inc.,
8 New England Executive Park West,
Burlington, MA 01803
Phone: 800-766-4224
Unlike conventional Boolean search technology that relies on keywords or string matching, SMART allows plain English interface queries (that formulate the subscriber's dynamic interest profile) to be indexed and then checked for similarity against a measure of the concept or attributes of an entire article or document. As an example, SMART reads through over 12,000 articles received each day, ranks them in order of priority for each subscriber, and then decides the cut-off point where articles are interesting enough to be sent to the client. It can even establish the threshold for deciding when to carry an article in full-text, abstract, in-brief, or headline-only form -- as well as which articles, out of several, best cover the same topic.
Individual has integrated SMART with the latest advances in information technology -- desktop publishing, electronic mail, fax, and groupware -- to create a proprietary, scalable system (patent pending) for producing high-octane, customized news.
In sum, Individual has gone beyond the inert, static databases of today to create proactive information products that ask subscribers what information is important to them, and then find it, sort it, package it in a concise, easy-to-use format, and deliver it in the medium of choice.
The company's pool of information providers combines general business news from regional, national, and international wires, newspapers, and periodicals, with targeted, vertical sources specific to high-technology, healthcare, energy, financial services, and other markets. In total, hundreds of news feeds provide about 20,000 stories each day to be filtered and matched to clients' specific interest areas. Individual continually expands both the depth and breadth of its coverage to meet the needs of its customers.
Individual is continually signing-up additional content providers. In the same way that successful movie producers have learned to simultaneously exploit multiple distribution channels ranging from direct box office sales and network television broadcast licenses to cable TV licenses and video rentals, successful information providers are learning to go through multiple channels to reach different market segments and broaden their reach. Besides receiving sizable royalties, these providers use Individual's products as circulation promotion vehicles, increasing the awareness of their news content and reinforcing their market franchise. In short, the company's customized news products offer information providers a medium for building their editorial franchise, reaching new readers, and producing incremental revenues with minimum cost.
If you generate high-quality industry news content, and are looking for a flexible and effective gateway into electronic publishing, please contact:
Cliff Thompson
617-273-6000 x336
cliff@individual.com
Individual's flagship product is First!, a daily, customized news service used by corporations to institutionalize current awareness and to create smarter, more dynamic organizations. First! is geared toward any workgroup that needs to stay abreast of the daily industry events affecting their business. These groups include sales, marketing, product management, finance, purchasing, advertising, public relations, and competitive analysis, among others.
First! stories are delivered each morning in full text, via fax, electronic mail, or as an enterprise-wide feed for groupware platforms such as Lotus Notes. Enterprise delivery in a database format utilizes the industry- standard SGML or HTML tagging structures used by client front-ends such as Mosaic. First! offers Individual's highest level of customization and service, where each profile is hand-crafted for the unique news requirements of a subscribing workgroup. This profile creation process is coordinated by Individual's account executives and industry editorial managers, content experts in our customers' vertical markets.
And to ensure that their profiles maintain the proper focus, First! clients take advantage of Relevance Feedback, a periodic grading process where they label the articles received as relevant or not. This information is then fed back into the system so that SMART "learns" about a client's shifting interests.
To encourage readership and knowledge-sharing in the corporate setting, First! allows organization-wide redistribution, facilitating access to multiple managers. Redistribution for ten users is bundled with the annual subscription price, and additional licenses are available on a per-user basis. In this way, First! becomes a cost- effective way to institutionalize current awareness.
Thousands of executives in the information technology, electronics, energy, healthcare, automotive, financial services, and defense industries depend on First! to stay on top of their markets.
For more information on becoming a First! customer, please contact:
Marlene Charnota
617-273-6000 x262
marlene@individual.com
HeadsUp is a personal, interactive, electronic brief designed to satisfy the information requirements of the individual business consumer. Its features and price point make it the perfect daily news tool for the busy manager, the small business executive, or the mobile business professional.
Like First!, HeadsUp draws from the same comprehensive list of information sources, and leverages SMART, the company's proprietary filtering technology. Unlike First!, news in HeadsUp is presented not in full text, but in the form of "briefs," 1-2 sentence summaries of the full article. The briefs provide a good capsule of each article's content, and if subscribers want to know "the whole story," they can interactively order the full text on demand.
Subscribers create their HeadsUp profiles by selecting 5- 10 relevant topics from the company's extensive library of over 700 different topic categories. Subscribers determine the best mix of topics, and prioritize their choices accordingly. They may change their selections at any time, while topic priorities are automatically adjusted based on their full-text fulfillment patterns.
HeadsUp is delivered daily by fax or electronic mail.
For more information on becoming a HeadsUp customer or to arrange for a 30-day free trial, please contact:
Charlie White
617-273-6000 x604
charlie@individual.com
iNews is a personal news service designed for the broad market of business professionals. Its daily content concentrates on the news-oriented events of the day as first reported by the major newswires and newspapers. iNews is the perfect solution for budget-sensitive people wanting to focus on the breaking developments of their competitors, customers, and market.
Most professionals already read their industry trade magazines and newsletters for in-depth analysis and commentary, but they have nothing in the way of "hot-off-the-press" news they can immediately use. iNews is their answer. Drawing from a defined set of primary news sources, and priced affordably, iNews is an excellent introduction to the customized news services of Individual, Inc.
iNews is similar to HeadsUp in that subscribers create their profiles by choosing topics from Individual's comprehensive Topic Selector(tm) and receive their news briefs each morning as selected by the SMART technology. Full-text article fulfillment is also available on demand. iNews differs from HeadsUp in that only Business Wire, PR Newswire, Reuters, AP Online, Newsbytes News Network, and the 60+ Knight-Ridder newspapers comprise its source pool.
iNews is delivered daily by fax and electronic mail.
For more information on becoming an iNews customer, please contact:
Charlie White
617-273-6000 x604
charlie@individual.com
NewsPage is a single-user online information service, designed to provide World Wide Web users with current, pre-sorted news across a broad array of topics and industries. With more than 25,000 pages, all refreshed daily, NewsPage is one of the deepest, most comprehensive sites on the Web.
NewsPage contains up-to-date information on over 1000 news Topics, organized into a hierarchy for ease of navigation. These Topics span 25 industries and include news from over 600 information providers. The topics are organized in an intuitive hierarchical structure, so that you can quickly access the information specific to your needs.
NewsPage Topics include headlines and news summaries for the day's top stories. The full-text versions of these stories can be read by clicking on the hyperlinked story headlines. Full-text stories are available only to registered NewsPage users.
Explore the NewsPage website and register now. To ask general questions or to share your impressions of NewsPage, send us some feedback.
For more information on becoming a NewsPage customer, please contact:
Margie Curley
617-273-6000 x583
margie@individual.com
For information about becoming a NewsPage
Advertiser, please contact:
Ian Kennish
617-273-6000 x587
ian@individual.com
For NewsPage marketing information, contact:
Jay Campbell
617-273-6000 x331
jay@individual.com
Copyright 1995, Individual, Inc. All rights reserved. First!, HeadsUp, iNews, NewsPage, and Topic Selector are trademarks of Individual, Inc.