Time Warner implements Perspecta/Vignette Combo

April 15, 1998

The Bulletin: Seybold News and Views on Electronic Publishing,
Vol. 3, No 26

The Fortune magazine portion of Time Warner's Pathfinder site will pioneer the integration of two technologies we've been writing about recently: Perspeca's SmartContent System and Vignette StoryServer. The two companies will work together, jointly marketing to other large Web publishers.

Vignette StoryServer is a template-driven content-management system for high-volume, story-driven sites. Perspecta's SmartContent system provides a way of organizing, delivering and visually presenting large amounts of information.

Joining the two together will make it easier for Web publishers to present users with custom views and make it easier to syndicate content to other properties. Metadata (such as keywords and topics) from stories served up by StoryServer will be fed to Perspecta, which builds topical links and other navigational aids, including a three-dimensional graphical approach to browsing large collections of documents.

Any publisher with a large Web site that pulls from multiple print publications would be a candidate for this combination. The Pathfinder site, for example, features online editions of Time, Life, People, Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated, as well as Fortune.

"Unlike most sites on the Web, Pathfinder is awash in content from Time's stable of magazines," said Dan Woods, director of editorial technology for Pathfinder. "Our problem is organizing the content to improve navigation and to make repurposing easier."

Woods said that Time Warner is in the midst of building a new content-management system for the multiple-property site. "By placing content into Perspecta's system, Pathfinder expects to deliver more relevant information to its audience by automatically cross-correlating articles from one publication on the site to another publication on its site," Woods explained.

Pricing starts at $50,000.