Each customer's angle - This man wants to see things from his customers' angle.

VirginNet was in the news this summer for all the wrong reasons.

A Sunday Times article noted that its internet site played host to a game in which contestants had to compete to be the "fastest gun in Dunblane".

Not surprisingly, VirginNet withdrew the site immediately it was notified of what was on the site. It claimed it had not been aware of the game's web site, hosted by a magazine called Paranoia Monthly, since it offered free web space to all 6,000 members and had difficulty monitoring everything.

VirginNet will be hoping that this unfortunate incident is already fading from memory, as it prepares to relaunch its service with a jazzy new personalising software. The company behind the technology, designed to make the internet experience more user-friendly by tracking a customer's movements and offering targeted information and advertising, is California-based Broadvision. It has been working with VirginNet since the company's launch in November last year. Another personalisation specialist, UK-based Autonomy, has also been supplying VirginNet, although it will not be so involved in the relaunch, which is scheduled for 1 October.

At present, thanks to Autonomy, VirginNet's news service works entirely on personalised technology. Instead of writing their own news stories, the VirginNet editorial team type in details of what kind of stories they want. The software then goes out and searches the web and comes back with the most appropriate information. This facility is also available for direct use by subscribers.

Autonomy's intelligent agent software is the cornerstone of the new version of the joint BT-News International service LineOne (see panel, right), which is built around personalisation and control. It allows advertising which is not only demographically targeted but dynamically sensitive to what the user is currently viewing as well as the history of their activity on the system.

The Broadvision technology works in a very different way to Autonomy's, but VirginNet publisher Alex Dale is confident that when it finally arrives - there have been some delays - it will transform the online experience.

For example, a user might already have noted their preference for horror films and surround-sound stereo. When they access VirginNet's cinema listing service, these two criteria, along with the user's address, will automatically come into play before a list of films is given. Dale believes the system will "enhance virtually any transaction online" and that there are already incentive schemes in the pipeline to encourage users to read customised ads.

As David Lethbridge, marketing director for LineOne, puts it: "If we are going to get more and more people to go online, then we are going to have to start giving them real reasons to do so. We are going to have to increase the offering." For both LineOne and VirginNet, personalisation is the key to increasing the offering.

Dale is looking forward to cross-promotions with other parts of the Virgin empire, capitalising on customer databases elsewhere in the group. Thus, personal shopping histories could be exploited to encourage trialling of different Virgin products. The extent to which VirginNet can be integrated with the other databases is not clear, however, not least because of data protection legislation.

But integration or not, Dale is not getting too carried away by the potential for personalising. "This is something to be used lightly, carefully and intelligently," he says. "It's not the be-all and end-all of any marketer's dreams. Not everything needs to be personalised and there are costs associated with it which can add up quickly if you're not careful."

VirginNet technical director Ivan Izikowitz, meanwhile, is excited by the possibilities held out by personalisation. "It will take us away from being an ISP and into the OSP domain," he says, differentiating between more basic internet service providers and more added-value online service providers such as CompuServe, AOL and MSN. "Every single VirginNet subscriber will have their own profile on the system. They can log their interests and preferences and we can tailor our service accordingly."

Autonomy's line is that this kind of personalising technology will not last, because it isn't flexible enough. Users don't know , at a given point in time, what their preferences will be tomorrow, argues Autonomy, and many of them can't be bothered with all the up-front form filling.

Autonomy's software, by contrast, depends on extracting core concepts from what a user is actually looking at and what they have looked at in the past, and matching up editorial and advertising material based on those concepts. What the system might offer a user changes constantly according to what the user actually does.

Izikowitz maintains that Broadvision was the right choice for Virgin, however. "It offers the ability to manipulate user data in great quantities and is probably the most scaleable system of this sort I've found," he declares.

Izikowitz is particularly stirred by the prospects for classified advertising.

Instead of searching through, say, lists of ads in a classified paper, where only three per cent may be appropriate to the their needs, users will be given only the most appropriate ads.

But Izikowitz says the advertising potential of the Broadvision technology won't be fully exploited until the UK online advertising environment is more fully developed.

VirginNet managing director David Clarke, who joined the company in June from US ISP Netcom and was previously a marketing man at Compaq Computer, likes the new technology because "it puts the user in control - some people will want to receive a lot of information, others might want very little. Selecting what you want from the vast array of information on the net is a priority and has to be done somehow."

Clarke says the Broadvision software wasn't adopted just for the sake of having cutting-edge technology. "We come at this entirely from the customer's point of view - if there wasn't a tangible benefit we wouldn't be doing it."

Clarke, who in the 1960s was a professional footballer for Leeds and began his business career as an accountant, says he is hard-nosed about the internet. "You have to have a plan that says you will make money out of this business at some stage. If you ask when, then certainly in our second financial year. And more importantly, we'll be cash-generative too, which many ISPs aren't."VirginNet now has over 50,000 paying customers, and expects that figure to rise to 100,000 by the end of the year. New subscriptions have been running at a rate of 2,500 a week, even though the company didn't advertise itself between March and September this year.

"We're completely dedicated to providing the right content," adds Clarke, "and the advertising should follow." A recent redesign of the web site was intended to make it a more advertising-friendly environment. Clarke expects 200 per cent growth next year, but it could be more if TV-based web access takes off. "The biggest inhibitor at the moment is the PC, but once we find a way round that, the growth will be huge. The next band of consumers is ten times the size of the group of current internet users."



Who has pushed personalisation the furthest?

Perhaps the most personalised place on the web currently is LineOne, the online service provider owned jointly by BT and News International.

Since launching in spring of this year, LineOne has rapidly increased its use of specialist software provided by the Cambridge-based company Autonomy (see 'suppliers' box), culminating in a full-scale relaunch on 15 September.

The advantage of Autonomy's software, say its growing number of fans, is that it goes much further than most keyword-based internet applications.

Rather than demanding the usual form-filling up front, where the user has to submit personal details and preferences, Autonomy's i3 software (short for intelligent information infrastructure) employs a sophisticated logic to determine the overall meaning of text rather than focussing on certain words within it.

This means that users of LineOne are constantly monitored and, based on their current reading patterns and previous usage, continually offered suggestions of more information that they might find valuable. This could be news articles from different newspapers in NI's library, or links to LineOne's Harper Collins encyclopedias, or links to other web sites, and so on.

Customisable "intelligent agents" also allow users to set up highly specific searches. These can monitor LineOne and search the web for relevant material even while the user is not logged onto the system. It can then either store the links to that material or email them to the user. The agents can also be asked to find other LineOne users with similar interests, or monitor chat areas and alert users if a discussion starts on a certain subject on the system.

The mid-September relaunch saw the use of this technology expanded to include the management of online ads, making it much easier for LineOne's advertisers to target users on an individual basis. The same service, also provided by Autonomy and called i3 Targeted Advertising, will also be offered to other web site owners and advertisers. Until now, the main players in this area - namely, Netgravity and Doubleclick - have used more conventional keyword-based software in their efforts to profile consumers.

Autonomy claims its software makes possible what it calls the "intelligent ad". Not only does it show ads to users based on their viewing history, but based on what the user subsequently does, and whether they respond to the ad or not. The profile of who the ad is shown to could then be refined, or the person could become a target for other relevant advertising.



Main suppliers of personalisation technology



Cambridge-based Autonomy's USP is its ability to analyse series of words - rather than noting individual words - before suggesting relevant links. Its internet and intranet clients include News International, BT, Unilever, Barclays and Associated Press. Unusually for an internet company, it went into profit after just 14 months. Web address: www.agentware.com.

Tel: 01223 421220.



Californian company Broadvision's main product is called Broadvision One-to-One. Clients include Grolier, US West and Bell System. Web address: www.broadvision.com. Telephone: 01753 701067.



IUS-based Firefly (not to be confused with the London-based PR consultancy) has three main personalising software products: Firefly Passport Office 2.0, Firefly Catalog Navigator 2.0 and Firefly Community Navigator. It claims 2.5m Passport holders.



IIpswich-based Infernet says it is different from the above because its technology is not so much intelligent agent software but more registration and analysis software. Clients include large publishers, online service providers, Saab, Dun & Bradstreet and Exchange & Mart. Web address: www.netclear.com.

Telephone: 01473 828838.