Fidelity, FirstRain and the iPad
The iPad is changing the world so fast sometimes it is hard to believe. We released our iPad app in early October. It’s such a hot, sexy app that now I lead off with it. Every time I meet with a prospect the first thing I show them is the Business Web on my iPad (usually pre-configured for their market) and then I’ll describe what we’re doing and why.
And to my delight I find that many of our prospects and customers are investing so heavily in the iPad that they can immediately relate to how FirstRain fits. But more fun than that is the new apps I get to see, often before they have been released. BI apps, sales apps, fashion apps… the world is going iPad.
Today Fidelity announced a major update to their iPad app – this time including FirstRain content. Fidelity has been our customer for many years now, but over the past few months it’s been exciting to work with them on integrating our sector and stock research into their iPad app.
Like we have done online, we are providing Fidelity with Hot Topic research, centered around sectors and trends – what’s rising? what should you as an investor be paying attention to? when you see a topic you want to drill in on, what are the recent developments that help you understand it?
You can download the new Fidelity iPad app for free on the iTunes store. To see hot topics, open it up and click on Research (tab at the bottom of the home screen). Chose hot topics and you’ll see the key active sectors and what’s changing . We identify what’s changing and what’s hot using our analytics technology – identifying clusters of topic, detecting anomalies, comparing them to past patterns, analyzing the new pattern to see if it shows a rising event. Here’s the landing Hot Topics screen this morning:
You see a list of sectors – swipe right to see more. Within each sector you can then drill down into a topic and see the latest business web news and understand what’s behind the trend. For example here — drilling in on Automobile Fuel Efficiency:
The topic research page shows you not only the news you need to read but also the stocks related to the trend that you may want to do deeper research on, and the volume of conversation on the Web on the topic you are researching so you can get a sense of how active it is.
Good apps on the iPad are simpler and easier, and more pleasurable to use than web apps. There is something about the simplicity combined with the tactile experience that changes how we feel about using the application, especially for non technical people and the older generation. We have only had the iPad for 2 years now… it is just the beginning of a sea change that will sweep how we all interact with both professional and consumer applications.
