Commercial Trends
Posted on July 25, 2006
Filed Under Commercial Trends |
I decided a new category is needed. A round up of a few items that should excite the revenue taste buds of content producers and aggregators. These are stored under commercial trends. This is not an attempt to compete with existing sources of knowledge on paid content but I do want to disentangle some of the trends out there and see who’s coming together with what in a way that opens revenue opportunities for others.
The most interesting of this short list is CNET’s move into parenting and food websites. Does it signal a tailing off of thoroughbred technology information sites? I think so. Technology is now so embedded in our culture that we should be careful about prolonging the techie culture without investigating culture as it is influenced by technology.
WorldNow and HouseValues Inc. (NASDAQ:SOLD - News) announced today a partnership that will exclusively integrate HouseValues’ highly popular www.HomePages.com consumer real estate service into WorldNow’s Local Media Network. The partnership will provide users of local news Web sites across the country with access to complete listings of homes for sale, comprehensive neighborhood real estate information and a home valuation service.
CNET, the tech information website in May, bought Urban Baby a parenting resource site. This move comes as CNET continues to move beyond tech and tech lifestyle….it recently entered into the food category with the acquisition of Chowhound and Chow Magazine.
CNET says UrbanBaby is “a stylish insider’s guide to what’s new for busy expecting and new moms. Combining original and member-contributed content, Urban Baby arms new moms with timely and useful information on
what to buy and what to do.” Launched out of NYC, Urban Baby has a local community focus and plans to expand into new markets..a relaunched site will come later this year.
Source Paidcontent.org,
Paid Content also point out that CNET has bought into food verticals with Chow.com. Also from Paid Content news of two new live performance websites: Network Live (which debuted with Live 
and Live Nation, both playing live concerts (live Nations performance site is actually here. I find both sites a little confusing. Live Nation seems more intent on selling albums and concert tickets than providing a good online experience.
BlogTalkRadio, by the way, is a live application of blogging (a site and sector described today by techcrunch), an interesting development but slightly at a tangent. Remember also PalTalk, which I think could develop into a great live performance platform but which is currently mired in the chat genre.
Meantime the Wall St Journal has announced it now plans to develop a specialist fashion and design bureau. If this is not evidence that the world is attaaching steadily increasing value to asethetics then nothing is.
To make sense of this, live venues have a good case for being out there as performance sites. As likely as not they need a good aggregator or set of aggregators. The real opportunity, it seems to me, is in providing a ready made infrastructure for top venues and drawing online audiences from one venue across related or partner channels. Venue networks are going to be big because they bring audience.
Live performance of one kind or another is going to be an integral part of the multi-channel future and it will reach into the lower levels of talent and user-content, lift out some gems and put back some pack donkeys. The business issues are fascinating of course: infrastructure, aggregation, charging.
Publishers meanwhile are increasingly aware that basic life skills are where the future lies for companies not dealing in the vibrant live life. The complex information that underlies a PC or gadget-life, is as nothing compared with the soft skills of being a parent or eating properly, even for heavens sake how we look.
Similary where to live and how to organise a household is a big business that’s guaranteed never to shrink. The myhome service in Ireland for example is currently for sale at around Euro 30 million (in a country of only 5 million people) and the sale and lettingsite daft.ie is reputedly up for Euro 15 million.
Computing technology has taken us on a journey to many possibilities but the business endgame lies at home, in front of the hearth, in the kitchen, in the bedroom, in the wardrobe. You could call it the domesticating of technology.
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