The company stumbled badly with Telerate, a proprietary on-line service for financial professionals. Telerate failed to respond to growing competition from Reuters and Bloomberg and neglected to invest in new technology. But with the Internet, company executives have been careful not to make the same mistakes. In 1994, when the explosive growth of the Web was something few people anticipated, Dow Jones Interactive sent its editors and technical staff on a Merry Prankster sort of road tour in two rented vans, driving through the country to discover what its customers wanted. They also told us they wanted just one product that could be used all over the company.
Librarians have special needs, but they use the same tools to get at information that the CEO does.
Both want to get information quickly and accurately. His customers also wanted to be able to combine internal data with data gathered from Dow Jones and selected Web sources. Dow Jones Interactive includes access to 2,000 Web sites that it has identified as high-quality sources, and it indexes these sites three times daily. Mr. Andrews says subscribers have grown to 600,000 from 50,000 over the last four years. He won't discuss revenue.