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E-business Watch
Tracking the
online media to bring you the key e-business trends
July
11, 2000
Will
Context Be The New King?
Arising from the Internet’s seemingly endless supply of information
comes the biggest challenge for users: how to find and keep track of quality
content. One response, according to
Media Metrix, has been for users to focus their browsing on a handful of
high-profile sites. Recent figures from Nielsen/NetRatings have also
found that the number of web sites users regularly visit has shrunk from ten to
six over the last several months.
A new breed of companies such as Quickbrowse, Octopus, Moreover
and Yodlee are meeting this challenge by
enabling users to broaden their access to information while also reducing their
browsing efforts. They are doing this by giving users the power to create their
own context—determining what content they view and how they view it. In so
doing, these context switchers threaten to disrupt the way content is
experienced, presented, marketed and syndicated, with important implications
for the business models of content publishers, aggregators and advertisers.
Context Switchers
Context switchers allow users to extract
individual parts from virtually any page on the Web and reconstitute the pieces
into a new user-defined page. For example, using a context switcher, a traveler
could quickly build a
customized Web page that contain summaries from a wide range of independent
websites including frequent flyer programs, online travel services, train
schedules, traffic reports, city guides, and weather information. With this
page, the user will be able to view information on a single web page or e-mail,
without having to go through the cumbersome process of visiting multiple sites
and remembering personal account information.
Dozens of new companies providing these tools have emerged over the last several
months. Among the most impressive are:
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Quickbrowse:
One of the most user friendly of the context switchers,Quickbrowse lets
users submit a list of websites of their choice and instantaneously stitches
together the different URLs into a single page. The system allows users to save
their customized views and even set a schedule to automatically receive these
views by e-mail. Quickbrowse generates revenue by licensing its technology to
others and syndicating its service on other websites.
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Octopus: This
is a free service that allows users to define, store and share Views
created from parts of other Web pages. It boasts unique technology that
automatically differentiates
sections of external Web sites into elements such as tables, forms, graphics
and charts. Through a browser, users can take elements from separate websites
and assemble them into a new, highly customized page. Octopus earns some
revenue from predefined modules, such as Power Search, Technology News and Stock
Quotes, each of which showcase selected providers. It is also marketing its
service to corporate customers for information gathering and consolidation on
their internal and external websites.
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Moreover: This
service aggregates 1,500 sources of online news stories, allowing viewers to
access 281 categories of information, which Moreover calls Webfeeds. The
system creates standardized news story
headlines and, using XML as the common language, syndicatesthe information to
other online services. Indeed, Octopus
uses Moreover as one of the preset newsfeeds in its default news module.
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Yodlee: Perhaps
the most mature context switching application, Yodlee makes information
available from over 1,200 online services and 300 direct partnerships including
financial institutions, travel sites, and email services. Users can enter their
profile information for other websites’ services, such as bank accounts, credit
card statements and news services, and obtain a summary of all their
information through one interface. Users of web-enabled phones and PDAs have
access to Yodlee on their devices, and can synchronize summarized pages with
personal information managers on their personal computer.
Implications
By enabling users to manage their own content, context
switchers are set to become powerful new players in the online world. Their ability to transform and effectively
destroy the user
experience carefully crafted by
advertisers, content providers and portal companies gives
context switchers the ammunition to challenge established online business
models.
For any company that expects to reap
rewards from their investments building brand and stickiness on their sites,
these new services threaten their ability to attract and retain customers. At the same time, context switchers
jeopardize advertising revenues, as users can scoop free
content from web sites and
filter out the banner advertisements.
Furthermore, by modifying consumers’ browsing behaviour,
these firms disrupt existing models of online advertising, which rely on
measurement tools such as page views, click-throughs and site hits. Without
cooperation from context switching services, advertisers will have much less
reliable tools for determining cause and effect relationships and measuring
user behaviour.
While today’s context switchers are
impressive, they are just the first of what will inevitably be many generations
of context switching applications. In the future, through the use of wireless
and broadband technologies, these tools will become even more prevalent,
fuelling the convergence between the Internet, television and other
communications media.
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