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Ananova out of sync with the future of the web?

By Tony Hallett

Published: Thursday 06 July 2000

Orange has bought a virtual newsreader for £95m.

Yes, it does sound daft, and on the face of it, it is. The Press Association (PA) developed a green-haired, female avatar called Ananova to deliver news, sports and entertainment information to visitors at http://www.ananova.com .

Ananova spoke her first words on 19 April this year, to a resounding chorus of skepticism. Why on earth would anyone want to watch the news being read by a VR figure whose lips aren't quite in sync with the audio?

Well, it seems Orange thought there was something worth buying. But £95m? According to the official announcement, this untidy sum buys Orange what was known as PA New Media before PA decided to re-brand the whole interactive division under the name Ananova.

Orange's release trumpets that our lovely newscaster is "the world's first digitally-rendered, fully-animated internet newscaster and information provider, exploiting sophisticated text-to-speech technology, and providing advanced search capabilities based upon web spidering, as well as personalisation and alerting capabilities".

In other words, Orange has in fact acquired more than just Ananova 'herself'. It's the technology behind her that's really significant (along with the expertise of the 100 or so staff who work in the division).

Orange, like so many other telecoms players, is trying to create a suite of products which its subscribers can access via their mobile phones. It's difficult to see where a graphics-intensive phenomenon such as Ananova fits in here: today's mobiles aren't renowned for their ability to display moving pictures.

That may change in time. Although to hear what she's saying, you'll need an earpiece of course.

But text-to-speech technology clearly has applications in the mobile arena, and good searching functionality is also going to stop mobile surfers hanging up.

However, it would be wrong to brand all this under the Ananova name, which is still perceived as a gimmick. And £95m? Compared with a 3G licence the sum sounds small. But in reality it could mean gambling a lot of cash for very little return.