Interactive media company starts ‘global conversation’

Charleston-based CIVISonline Inc., a software and services company that offers tools and technology for major news media to enhance audience interactivity and “citizen journalism,” has been accepted by the S.C. Research Authority’s SC Launch! program and has received $75,000 to expand the company.

CIVISonline’s chairman and founder, Phil Noble, a global and public affairs veteran, has already deployed the technology, developed during a period of four years, to more than 60 media partners, most notably the British Broadcasting Co. for use in its “Global Conversation Project.”

The technology is similar to Politicsonline, Noble’s Internet technology company that combines news, tools and strategies for politics and public affairs. With 900 customers and 40,000 subscribers in 60 countries, Politicsonline’s client base and partners includes AOL, the United Nations, the European Union, several universities and foreign governments, among other enterprises.

Noble served as a consultant to the BBC’s senior management on the Politicsonline program.

“For the last six years, the BBC has been our principal client,” he said. “They basically found us and said, ‘You guys know more about how to use the technology to build audiences. What are the applications of that to media?’ So we started thinking about it and we came up with CIVISonline.”

Noble still does work with Politicsonline, “but that’s diminished a bit,” he said.

However, applying that technology to media, Noble said, is increasing in demand, primarily because of changing trends in journalism.

“The bottom line is that print newspaper readership is declining,” he said. “The global news and journalism business is desperately attempting to restructure its business models to deal with marketplace distributions generated by new online content delivery and advertising models.

“Through CIVISonline, we provide these media outlets with tools to promote a new interactive model, a civic ‘MySpace,’ if you will, that can change the global media market.”

The CIVISonline platform enables local-to-global interactive conversations via news media outlets by using what Noble calls “share and compare” technology and data capture.

“We’re the underlying technology that you’ll see on different news sites,” Noble explained. “For example, there might be a story about the war, and beside it there will be a poll asking for your opinion.

“The thing is, the same poll or some other feedback tool will be on news sites around the world and in many languages. That same basic icon question may be on a thousand different news sites, so when it comes up in French or Hindi or whatever, people can participate in their own language.”

The “front end” will include polls, quizzes, surveys, ratings, blogs, videos and other interactive tools. The technology will have mobile and PDA capabilities.

CIVISonline’s target marketplace is the 13,500 daily newspapers and television stations around the world, Noble said.

“The word ‘civis’ is Latin for ‘citizen.’ We’ve developed the technology to enable people to engage in global conversation,” he said. “And it’s not only the technology but also how to build the business and distribution model to make that happen.”

Bill Mahoney, CEO of SCRA, said CIVISonline shows a great deal of promise.

“They’re in a very big market, and they’re committed to being in Charleston and South Carolina,” he said. “Under those criteria they were a good qualifier for the SC Launch! money. They had the development with the BBC, and that kept them alive, and now they’re bridging to the next phase.”

Dave McNamara, director of SC Launch! and senior vice president of operations of SCRA’s SC Public Interest Research Sector, said the emergence of CIVISonline is relevant to South Carolina’s knowledge economy because the company has the opportunity to seize a global market opportunity and thus create knowledge-economy jobs in South Carolina.

SC Launch!, in collaboration with Clemson University, the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of South Carolina, accelerates entrepreneurial growth of technology startups by delivering key tools for success.

“CIVISonline represents proven technology applications that will help distinguish itself and South Carolina and that will support development of a high-impact company,” McNamara said.

Besides the SC Launch! investment, Noble said CIVISonline has half a dozen S.C. investors and has raised commitments for full seed funding. He said the money raised to date will accomplish two things.

“First, we’re signing up some initial media partners, and we’re progressing on that,” he said. “We’ve reached agreements with the Mail & Guardian of South Africa, and we expect to have an agreement with The New York Times before too long. And there are several others, such as a project we recently completed for Reuters.

“Second, we’ll be raising more equity capital for our next round.”

In his presentation to the SC Launch! board of directors, Noble explained the CIVISonline revenue model, which includes upfront technology and software fees; hosting, access and license fees; and advertising revenues that would be shared by the media partners.

He pointed out that, to date, there are no direct competitors, although several major players, such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL, may develop their own versions soon.

“This is a huge, ambitious, audacious, outrageous, totally off-the-wall idea,” he said. “And that’s why we’re doing it.”