Reportlinker's blog : Web 3.0, Vertical Search, Information Industry and Market Research News

Worldwide Information industry : $ 365 billion in 2006, $ 458 billion in 2009 ? French information industry less than $ 2 billion in 2006 !!!

If the Information Industry plays a strategic role worldwide, its importance on the French market is clearly limited. - Financial market information player is a strongly consolidated industry (Thomson Corp takes Reuters over for more than $17 B) !!! - Coface is the only international player. The French giant bought this week Dafaslien, a French database weighting less than 1 M€ of revenues. - Information is key in Competitive Intelligence market, French players provide services and software - Scientific and medical information ??? No French actor among leaders.

Many explanation can be given to this situation. The language barrier is the most obvious : French language information service are rarely used outside France And the limited potential of this market pushes French information industry specialists to launch services in English, as Reportlinker does.

In this singular landscape, one of the most important event will open its doors in less than a month. I-expo will gather 6000 visitors (!!) among 70 exhibitors between the 12 and 14 of June.

Workshop are organised beside the show, and one can be really interesting to French information industry players : "Climate change? Market & Technological Forces that will impact the Professional Information Industry over the Next Five Years" This conference aims at analysing the future evolution of the industry. Speakers are Anglo Saxons specialists. The smallest of the warranty attendees can have !

Conference on Wednesday the 13th of June 2007, 14h30-16h00, Salle Dürer.

ENTERPRISE SEARCH SUMMIT is a highly intense, in-depth, 2-day conference that covers how to develop, implement and enhance cutting-edge internal search capabilities. I ENTERPRISE SEARCH SUMMIT targets information manager or IT or search professional.

During this two days, on specific conference can be really interesting : "In Search of the Next Google: The Upstart Panel" Since 2004, venture capitalists have poured more than $350 million into almost 80 Internet search startups. Many are convinced they can become the next Google of consumer search, or that they can challenge the leaders in the enterprise and site search space. Hear directly from several of these “upstarts,” and get an inside glimpse how they are pushing into the next generation of search technology.

The Codie Awards, established in 1986 and given each year by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) utilize both journalist and peer-company reviews to identify the leaders and innovators in 75 categories across the software, digital content and education technology industries.

Intuit products gathered the largest number of awards for a single firm, with four Codie winners: QuickBooks Merchant Services for Web Stores won in Best eCommerce Solution; QuickBase won in Best Project Management Solution; Quicken Medical Expense Manager won in Best Medical and Health Information Product and Quicken Home Inventory Manager was judged Best Home Productivity Solution.

An aggregator has been awarded for the third time in the row ! HighBeam Research Engine just received the SIIA’s 2007 Codie Award for “Best Online General Reference Service," which it also won last year. In 2005, HighBeam won the “Best Content Aggregation Service” Codie Award.

HighBeam combines research tools with a collection of 35 million premium articles from quality publications, including 3,000 respected newspaper, magazine, book, journal and transcript publishers, updated daily and going back 20 years.

The Search Engine Meetings bring together commercial search engine developers, academics and corporate professionals to learn from each other.

This annual meeting provides a forum and point-of-reference for all those interested in the intricacies of Search and Retrieval. The meeting draws those with a professional interest in search engines (such as search engine designers and developers) and those interested in applying search engines in their own professional environments. Search is at the heart of information retrieval; and the Search Engine Meeting provides an annual point of reference as to what is happening in this fast-moving and exciting field.