Maud Larpent from Reuters just informed me, early this week, about the launch of Reuters Insight. She has been kind enough to pre-register me so I could have a try ASAP, what I did.
The service is still in beta version and you can feel and see it:
- A help button is obviously missing for example.
- Advertising from Google is not displaying properly,
- Frames are not nicely organised.
- Pricing scheme is unclear
What I found interesting was to feel – as a user – at the very center of the service:
- you can configure your centers of interest,
- your can define email alert topics so to receive news or blog-posts matching your profile.
- You can even drop/receive questions to/from some experts of the Reuters Insight’s community of users – for a fee? not clear – and share knowledge online.
- Basically, you configure a profile so to get relevant information, and only this one (in principle).
How accurate is the news filtering mechanism? I have to be honnest; I have tried it now for more than a week and have to say it is not working!. I agree with Jason Bush (see his post here): what I feel the most is to be overloaded with non relevant information. But, let’s be optimistic, the version is still beta and things can change with future upgrades…wait and see,
Maud Larpent said to me that this new service
aimed at medium sized organisations who are operating internationally– either by sourcing, manufacturing or selling overseas. The product is a combination of news and community features aimed at helping firms better understand what will impact their business. It’s focused principally on procurement, distribution and risk management.
You can read more about Reuters Insight features here.
Jean-Philippe
I really appreciate you joining while the product is still going through its teething problems and your feedback is really useful to shape the development of the product.
Regarding the news filtering we are integrating in our next upgrade (next week) a grapeshot technology (http://www.grapeshot.co.uk/) which will enhance the searching capability.
We will also very shortly be releasing new features focused on improving users’ experience of the community.
A major emphasis is on facilitating communication between users and letting users create ‘favourites’ and ‘connections’ from the networks.
We will also be adding a leaderboard and a “Today’s Top User” to highlight those individuals who are making the biggest contribution to the community. Polls and blogging features will also be added so the community can make its opinions well known.
These elements will all be released within the next month and we have an extensive roadmap beyond that. But we are of course continuously seeking new ideas fom our users about what they’d like to see next.