SIIA Executive Summit: Stalking the “X” Factor

(by guest blogger John Blossom, President, Shore Communications Inc.) Steven Sieck of EPS lead a panel of the content industry’s most experienced forward thinkers, including Tim Cadogan, VP of search at Yahoo!, David Marques, CTO for Elsevier Science, John Patrick, President of Attitude, LLC and Christine Varney, a Partner with Hogan and Hartson LLP. One of the key “X” factors that surfaced was confronting the power of public and enterprise search engines and their ability to deliver premium content to professional audiences. As Tim Cadogan put it, “You have the content, we have the users.” Combined with David Marques’ observation that vendors are on the “cusp of co-opetition” with institutional libraries, the squeeze is on for content aggregators to define a value proposition for full-service delivery that cannot be contextualized more effectively by others. On the regulatory front, Christine Varney noted a wave of new U.S. regulations on Web access, IP telephony, spam RFID tagging and privacy that could provide at least as much change to the competitive landscape as any market-driven development – and quite possibly with many consequences understood only dimly today. But probably the biggest “X” factor is us – everyday people who are now very comfortable with information technology as a way to inform and entertain ourselves. As John Patrick noted, “most of the Internet was predictable if you look at what kids do.” An array of “X”s, any one of which can be a compelling changing factor for content.

This coverage is sponsored by HighBeam Research.

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