 |
||
|
|
||
| |||||||||||
Delivering breaking news via the internet The product of a 1998 merger between Individual, ADP/ISS and Desktop Data, NewsEdge delivers important news to busy professionals. It culls only the most relevant articles from more than 400 sources and sends them right to the user's desktop. NewsEdge is the internet's leading provider of e-content applications to business web sites and enterprise intranets. The world's largest company of its kind, NewsEdge serves clients at more than 1,400 companies, sending them information via internet/intranet options, groupware platforms, e-mail and fax. In addition, over 120 publishers and about 700,000 Internet and individual subscribers use the company's NewsPage service. Clients include KPMG, General Electric Co., and Microsoft Corp., among other corporate extranets, portals, and b2b exchanges. From desktops to cutting edge Donald McLagan, a former executive from Lotus, founded Desktop Data in 1988. Its first product was a news-delivery service called NewsEDGE. The company convinced IBM to sell NewsEDGE to its customers in 1990, and it has been playing with the big boys ever since. Desktop Data negotiated a number of other strategic agreements with news and technology companies, and went public in 1995. Two years later, Bloomberg added its news service to NewsEDGE, and Microsoft added NewsEDGE to its Internet Explorer browser. Name derivation In 1998 Desktop Data purchased ADP/ISS, the news integration unit of ADP Brokerage Services Group. It then acquired Individual, an e-mail news service, and the new company was renamed NewsEdge. The merged unit enjoys three times the partnerships - with information and technology leaders like Bloomberg, Microsoft, and Digital Knowledge Assets LLC. Individual, founded in 1989, owned Internet information businesses ClariNet and CompanyLink. Since the merger, Individual's "First!" news service has been combined with NewsEDGE, and the ClariNet has been spun off into a current events business called NaviLinks. Exceeding the limits Today, NewsEdge serves 27 of the top 28 financial institutions in the United States, and its products have been integrated with four major dealing-room computer applications: CSK +Arena, Midas-Kapiti MarketWatch, TIBCO Marketsheet and Reuters Kobra. In July 1998, NewsEdge announced an agreement to integrate its personalized news service into Chase Manhattan's dealing platform. It will now provide up-to-the-minute news and industry/market information to Chase employees in the U.S. and abroad. Also that month, the company launched a new promotion: weekly tips from famous management gurus on its Netscape Business Journal by NewsEdge, a site that offers personalized news, company and industry information, plus business research provided by Northern Light. Featured management specialists like Faith Popcorn and Michael Hammer will cover topics ranging from professional development to business strategy. Going above and beyond NewsEdge has increased its efforts to become an even more pronounced leader in global news and current awareness. In 1999, the company worked with Microsoft to incorporate NewsEdge into Microsoft Outlook in order to be more readily accessible by business people. IBM was not to be left out, however. In the same year, NewsEdge announced that the computer company planned to integrate NewsEdge Review Topics, its daily news briefings, into IBM's internal web news service. NewsEdge also introduced a new line of software known as NewsEdge Insight in 1999 to track activity in the British aerospace and defense sector. Increasing its influence in the U.K. even further, NewsEdge also struck a deal with Britain's Press Association to provide news including political and financial information to subscribers worldwide. NewsEdge's strength in the European market was further increased by the company's partnerships with eight European media companies such as the BBC, the Daily Telegraph, and eFinancial News. Similarly, the company increased its international clientele by creating customized news packages through an agreement with the Associated Press. NewsEdge did not stop there, however. The company created a new subsidiary called NewsPage.com in 1999 to develop its web business and to help the company remain competitive in the internet market. The NewsEdge Corporation also created an electronic commerce relationship with RoweCom Inc. to provide millions of books and subscriptions to NewsEdge customers through RoweCom's Knowledge Stores. NewsEdge will promote the kStores with links on its web site. As a testament to NewsEdge's quality services, the company won the 1999 Personal Information Product Award sponsored by Information Age. Refocusing In May 2000 NewsEdge announced that it would redirect its efforts toward the e-content market, utilizing half of its resources to that end. The new e-content offerings include content licensing, development, editorial, and business development. NewsEdge formed a partnership with Autonomy Corporation, enabling the company to sell and market its e-content applications to web portal, corporate intranets, and e-commerce services. In 2000 RoweCom Inc. cancelled its acqusition of NewsEdge, which would have cost RoweCom $227 million. NewsEdge officials say the company will most likely look for another bidder.
"We like referrals", say NewsEdge insiders, "but the job market is really tight at the moment," so the company recently began recruiting programmers on college campuses. The company also advertises job openings on its web site and uses headhunters to find talent. Interested applicants can submit resumes by regular mail to corporate headquarters or by e-mail to: resumes@newsedge.com. Applicants usually go through about three rounds of interviews, depending on the department and the position applied for. They meet with members of the team they would be working with to make sure they'll fit in personality-wise. If you're applying for a technical position, reports one insider, you should expect them to ask you enough technical questions to determine your skill set. Interviewers are more concerned about what you're capable of learning than what you currently know. So it's a good idea to give an example of how you've picked up on something quickly or just that you can figure out new software on your own. Another source reminds prospective hires to ask questions too - you want to sound interested in the place. The idea is to sound eager to get to work and not hung up on things like vacation and sick days. Another important tip: Make sure you know the position of the person you're talking to. If they're one of the grunts, ask how they like working there, etc. If they're a director or VP, ask them about their long-term goals for the department.
It's play time "The environment at NewsEdge is very relaxed, tolerant, informal and progressive. We all respect each other's different abilities and there's a pool table in company HQ which gives us a nice break when we need it," claim insiders. Employees wear whatever they want, and sources report "lots of toys around, mostly stuff that shoots projectiles." "Hours are flexible, but we work as many hours as it takes to get out work done," our sources say. "We aren't ever pressured to work more than 40 hours a week, but if we need to, we do, especially at crunch time like if we're about to ship a new version." Salaries are good, benefit packages compete with the best of them, and employees receive bonuses for successful projects.
Bloomberg;Dialog Corporation;Dow Jones;Excite@Home;FactSet;Infoseek;LEXIS-NEXIS;Microsoft;OneSource;Reuters;Thomson Corporation;Wavo;Yahoo! More Company Profiles For more career information, go to Vault.com ©2000, Vault.com Inc
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
