Wednesday, May 04, 2005 4:55 PM
Hmmm...Not sure if this means something or nothing...but
Newsgator announced today that it is partnering with
Factiva.
The [companies] agreement will allow all existing Factiva customers to access their Factiva content via the NewsGator online and NewsGator Microsoft Outlook RSS readers at no additional charge to their existing Factiva contracts. Factiva content will also be available in NewsGator premium products at an additional charge. Further, the companies announced that they are working together on other opportunities in the growing enterprise RSS space.
Reading the press release above, I immediately wondered what impact--both today and in the future--this partnership could have on the already existing LexisNexis and Factiva agreement. I seems to me that the NewsGator agreement is similar to the one between LexisNexis and Factiva, except that it uses RSS as its delivery mechanism. If I wanted to recieve Factiva-generated headlines in my RSS aggregator or Outlook NewsGator inbox, would LexisNexis be an option?
My final thought....NewGator is a tiny company today, but what if Microsoft buys it for MSN? Don't look now, but the continued innovation surrounding weblogs and syndication technologies may well turn more and more disparate companies into competitors. Interesting stuff.