IT'S ABOUT TIMES.COM...
I've been ruminating on the acquisition of About.com by the New York Times for $410 million, and reviewing some of the comments on the web (e.g. Fred Wilson likes it, ) Congratulations, Martin on the promotion to SVP-Digital Operations at the NYTimes. Being a New Yorker for almost quarter of a century, I'm an addicted consumer of the Times content, both off-line and on. (Although it is time to change that corny TV commercial for the NYTimes subscriptions with the power, urban couple and the nerdy kid who wants to learn "what's new on the web").
I can't say the same for About.com's content, which started off being interesting when the company was founded and run by Scott Kurnit in the early years, but has a long way to go to reaching its full potential (but that can be said of all of us). Although there are allegedly 500 sites on different categories in there with authoritative content in each of those areas, the site is confusing to navigate and hard to tell where the editorial content begins and the advertorial content ends.
For example, type in "plasma tv", a popular consumer item right now in both about.com and google.com, and you get A and B. Both have sponsored results on top and editorial results on bottom, but the results from about.com tend to be less relevant and dated if I'm trying to get up to speed on plasma tvs. And by the way, try as I might, I can't find the about.com "expert" on the page. Please let me know if I've missed the link on the page.
Admittedly, this anecdotal example may be way off and unfair in terms of the overall quality of the site, and certainly, the financial and operational metrics of the company, as outlined in the NYTimes conference call are nothing to sneeze at. But, I do hope the Times can really bring out the inner shine of this property and do more than "cross-marketing" and adding another dotcom to their "federation". Jay Rosen makes an excellent point of how About.com mastered search engine optimization via the expertise of its 500 guides to find permanent linkages through the major search engines, and why the NYTimes.com site cannot avail itself of the same opportunity due to its subscription walled-garden approach. Then of course is the whole open question of how these 500 guides get compensated going forward, a question that many bloggers are struggling with... (Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web has some interesting observations on it).
I'm not optimistic that the Times will change their walled garden approach. Note that they charge long-time subscribers to the print edition like me $2.75 an article that I try to retrieve from their on-line archives a few weeks after I've received the physical newspaper, and thrown it away. I can more than likely get similar content on that subject on the web via Google, or even About.com for free (although possibly not as eruditely and eloquently written as it would be in the Times),
In a world where even the once mighty AOL is struggling while still trying to protect "valuable" and revenue producing content behind a walled garden, but losing the battle due to an increasing lack of differentiation with "free"content on the web, albeit internet advertising supported revenue, it's about time for the New York Times to give these issues a deep, hard think, and maybe $410 million is the price of admission.
Comments