Tech Culture No Longer a Big Sell

Posted on August 1, 2006
Filed Under What's New, Commercial Trends |

This come from Paid Content:

“So this has been the worst kept secret in the trade media world: Ziff Davis has been trying to sell itself…rather its owner, private equity firm Willis Stein & Partners, which bought the magazine assets of Ziff Davis for $780 million in cash in 1999, has retained Evercore Partners and Lehman Brothers as its bankers for a possible sale, in full or in parts.”

Willis Stein are going to lose money on the deal. It comes not long after we saw CNET buying into food and parenting verticals. And of course Federated Media, begun by ex-wired founder John Battelle, is also a focus for parenting as well as for tech blogs.

The decline of techie or geek publishing is fascinating but I think positive and it underscores the fact that Web 2.0 is really about the diversification of the web from its tech culture origins. The web conversation is broadening out.

What does it mean though for who invests where? Culturally English language countries have developed serious deficits. A generation of parents that don’t know how to parent or how to cook but do know how to run up debt and who are likely to look ahead and think which chronic disease am I going to be hit by?

Entrepreneurial attention should focus on helping them out of a mess. Editorial focus in newspapers missed the boat and it’s been down to teh blogger community to turn the good time journalism of TV and the majors into a more concerned medium.

We see business that have a very practical supportive role in the home as being tomorrow’s winners. Look for example at meal assembly services - you read that right. Services that help parents assemble a meal. Check this out for a really low tech but rapidly growing use of the web. And then extrapolate - to parenting, health, household organisation.

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