Breaking news, therefore, IM

Factiva has introduced a new service: Factiva Alerts, which the company says delivers continuously updating headlines from Factiva's top breaking news sources directly to a user's desktop via instant messaging technology.

This new product, a downloadable client software application, addresses the need for continuously updating news functionality direct to the desktop. The company says public relations, corporate communications, competitive intelligence and executive-level professionals will benefit most from Factiva Alerts.

Factiva says the news sources for its Alerts service have been chosen for their global news value and timeliness of delivery, including the complete Dow Jones, Reuters, and The Associated Press newswires and key daily newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Financial Times .

This product is said to provide heightened current awareness with scrolling profiled headlines pushed directly to the Factiva Alerts viewer. The headlines push down in the Factiva Alerts viewer as new content arrives, building a 24-hour archive. When a headline is clicked, the full text is retrieved from Factiva's host. The software application can be minimized on a user's desktop allowing them to work in other applications while constantly monitoring profiled news. Users can customize personal and group Alerts to pull headlines from a specific industry, company, topic or keyword.