Profiled: NetContent
President/CEO: Shaun Carrigan
No. Employees: 12
Founded: 1999

In today's Information Age, the concept of "information" has developed a mixed reputation. Call it the Jekyll and Hyde complex of intent versus perception.

When information is needed or wanted by the recipient, it is immediately deemed "mission critical," "urgent," or "of interest." Unsolicited information, on the other hand, is almost invariably perceived as "spam" and discarded without ever being viewed. Whether the information in question is of value to the recipient is almost beside the point; the decision to accept or reject content in an information-saturated marketplace rests almost completely on two questions: Did I ask for this? and How will it benefit me?

The problem of information overload is so pervasive that people on both sides of every information transmission are wringing their hands in frustration. Legitimate businesses attempting to communicate with existing customers and market to new customers via email are being virtually cut off at the knees by recipients who are tired of unwanted contact. It's a legitimate complaint, as most email users will attest to receiving dozens—if not hundreds—of unsolicited emails every week.

"The information glut—particularly email spam—is a key challenge for today's digital content manager," says Shaun Carrigan, president and CEO of NetContent, a Nashville, Tennessee-based provider of electronic content solutions, research tools, and information services to both organizational and individual users. "The paradox is that, as information distribution has become easier and less expensive, meaningful communications have become harder to achieve. There's too much irrelevant information in the email box, and even on the corporate intranet. Email will become a decreasingly reliable medium until technology solutions and regulators catch up with the market."

Notably, Carrigan has a vested interest in keeping emailed (and other) content reliable because his company provides an account-based Web interface linking its customers to relevant news and business information via the very medium he's eager to protect. How does it work? "Content managers choose content from available sources by using our search engine and automatic filters, which notify them by email when suitable content is available," Carrigan explains. "They can then upload their own content and manage it with our application. And their selections are automatically pushed into their Web sites, intranet newsfeeds, or email newsletters."