When Google won the bidding for DoubleClick, (Yahoo! CEO) Terry Semel was quoted as saying “this validates our strategy and proves display advertising is important.” Or something like that. While his public face was diplomatic, I wonder what he was saying off camera. Perhaps something like:
“Holy cr-p! What the heck are we gonna do now?!”
And who could blame him if he did react this way? GoogleClick will present serious challenges for Yahoo! And Mr. Semel might need to blow off some steam about it from time to time. But it’s not just Google that’s making Semel (and other CEOs) blurt out expletives. Desperate outbursts are a daily occurance in the fast changing Web business. Choice words are probably muttered daily by various industry leaders - from companies large and small - as they watch the “long tail” upset their apple carts.
Today, for example, newspapers in general and DIGG specifically took a torpedo as Myspace launched its news service. (Read all about it from Geek Watch).
Myspace isn’t the first to offer a news tagging service. Digg is the one that brought it into public conciousness by giving the tech community a way to tag news in that vertical. Other vertical markets have followed suit. Myspace, like other sites before it, is combining tagging with news aggregation and essentially letting users find stories and MAKE them news. Just today another site in the sports world, YardBarker, is offering just such a service.
I really like the strategy by Myspace. The site is creating “channels” of content in partnership with its user base and in the process creating new advertising opportunities for Myspace sponsors. (Here’s the Myspace political channel, for example). Thanks to its massive userbase, Myspace has a built in audience. Plus, since Myspace is the “Seinfeld” of the Web world (it’s a site ABOUT “nothing”), it can be very flexible. On the other hand, I see sites like Yardbarker being more valuable as “tools” within other sites, rather than stand alone destination sites. There’s just too much comptetition and the barriers to entry are too low for sites like Yardbarker to go it on their own, in my opinion.
I’m wondering if MyColts can pull off the Myspace channel approach. We’re confident that our users will want to form “sub communities” to discuss “off topic” things like news. But will they feel comfortable consuming, tagging and linking to news that comes to them through their “colts” social net portal rather than a more traditional news site? It remains to be seen, but we’ll pursue it for the same reasons Myspace has done so…money!!
And in the end, maybe we’ll be uttering some outbursts of joy.
Great stuff Pat. I had no idea about yardbarker and just added the necessary code as a permanent widget to my posts on my blog. I really enjoy reading your blog and insights on various sports marketing topics.
In relation to the post topic, I’m finding this idea of giving a rating to everything pretty amusing. It’s almost as if web 2.0 is demanding the consumer’s interaction with an approach that we’ve heard before “Your vote counts.”
[...] Myspace News causing “desperate outbursts”? - Sports Marketing 2.0 | Pat Coyle When Google won the bidding for DoubleClick, (Yahoo! CEO) Terry Semel was quoted as saying “this validates our strategy and proves display advertising is important.” While his public face was diplomatic, I wonder what he was saying off camera. (tags: myspace news newspaper) [...]