New search services; ClariNet: news wire service for the Internet age. (ClariNet Communications Corporation)

ClariNet Communications Corporation supplies ClariNews wire service news for dissemination over the Internet. They estimate some 30,000 Internet-ers read their news. ClariNews uses the Usenet message interchange format and UUCP, TCP/IP, and other delivery protocols. Host subscribers receive the digital newswire directly into Unix computer systems. Subscribers pay low monthly site license fees. They can also select subsets from the full file. Single user connections can cost as little as $35 a month, while larger site networks can pay less than a dollar a month per user.

ClariNet gathers live news from many sources, including wire services, syndicates, computer industry sources, newsletters, etc. It breaks material down into key categories and priority ratings with key words for geographic location and story topic. Overall ClariNews covers general and headline news, sports, financial and business news, weather, and stock quotes. The Newsbytes service provides daily coverage of the computer industry and syndicated columnists. Local news covers 35 regions in the U.S. and Canada. A NewsClip filter program lets subscribers retrieve news stories and columns using key words in the users pre-defined profile.

Recently, ClariNet experienced a crisis when United Press International, its primary news supplier, had a change in management and pulled out. Brad Templeton, president of ClariNet Communications, announced two new wire service suppliers--Associated Press and Reuters--would take UPI's place. AP will provide special wire stories, with some additions for ClariNews readers. Reuters will provide its North American Business Wire, European Business Wire, and Asian Business Wire. Reuters has also announced plans to expand U.S. coverage. ClariNet plans to add a major feature wire. Their own columnists continue to contribute to ClariNet. The primary loss lies in local news, though ClariNet is working on a replacement. They do cover U.S. state news. The newsgroup structure tied to UPI feeds will continue until ClariNet re-stabilizes around new providers, after which it will be re-structured. Many ClariNews sources remained untouched--syndicated features, Dilbert comic strip, Newsbytes, Bay City News, Matrix News, technology stock reports, etc.

The new sources will involve price increases. At present, new sources will not run on BBS/Public Access Unix systems. AP and Reuters also impose more stringent monitoring of auditing and feeds at specific host sites.