CNET’s Getting Its Groove

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

1. Mani
   

   October 9th, 2006 at 12:01 am

   Hello Michael,

   There is a typo for the URL for TechRepublic up in this post. It says http://www.techcrepublic.com, should be http://www.techrepublic.com

   Mani

2. Michael Arrington
   

   October 9th, 2006 at 12:02 am

   hey thanks.

3. Sam Davyson
   

   October 9th, 2006 at 12:28 am

   Although oddly it goes to http://techrepublic.com.com

4. Jav
   

   October 9th, 2006 at 12:48 am

   CNET used to be a daily visit back in 1996

5. Alaska Miller
   

   October 9th, 2006 at 1:13 am

   CNET owns http://com.com and most of their properties runs off that server

6. Alaska Miller
   

   October 9th, 2006 at 1:15 am

   One interesting takeaway is that CNet traditionally has not made big efforts at cross promoting or connecting their various properties and brands.

   How well does this decentralized hodgepodge content media network work? Why don’t they make a portal page and offer up the features of their sites?

7. Ryan
   

   October 9th, 2006 at 5:31 am

   I don’t see a link to ANYTHING resembling myspace. I even typed in http://www.cnet.com and explored the main page… nadda…

   To put it another way, “What the hell are you talking about?”

8. Cathy Brooks
   

   October 9th, 2006 at 8:45 am

   I’m feeling a bit of deja vu where CNET is concerned these days. All of these efforts combined with the fact that this Thursday they’re launching CNET TV (ZDTV or TechTV anyone?) makes me go hmmmm … As someone who worked at TechTV for several years, I always thought that the idea was a valid one, but between the unfortunate timing (launch in 1999) and the worst ever management team, that venture was doomed from the get-go. I, for one, would love to see CNET’s redesign and new efforts work.

9. Martin
   

   October 9th, 2006 at 8:52 am

   Mike - thanks for the mentions.

   For those thinking “why don’t they leverage/combine CNET.com and the other properties and why we don’t “portal’ them, or massively integrate cross promotions? ”

   Our approach is to build sites *specifically* targeted to each audience and content. The best comparison to our strategy is that of the the cable model (MTV, BET, Nick, ESPN, Speed). Each brand focused on something specific as opposed to the portal like strategy pursued by the broadcasters (NBC, ABC, CBS).

   On the cross promotion front, we will do a better job of cross promoting, but the last thing we want to is force everything into a lowest common denominator or pretend that hardcore gamers at GameSpot have the same needs as the food fanatics at CHOW.

   Ryan: Mike was referring to http://www.techrepublic.com as the myspace for geeks.

10. Dean Collins
    

    October 9th, 2006 at 10:17 am

    ha ha ha.

    Maybe they heard our Mexuar Corraleta application is being launched on October the 24th at Astricon in Dallas and realised their solution was last generation crap.

    Check out these links for more info
    http://www.mexuar.com/products_sdk.shtml
    http://www.mexuar.com/products_connect.shtml#
    http://deancollinsblog.blogspo.....speed.html

    Also if you haven’t heard of Asterisk check out
    http://www.Asterisk.org
    http://www.astricon.net

    or email me at cognation.net for more info.

    Cheers,
    Dean

11. Drama 2.0
    

    October 9th, 2006 at 12:53 pm

    How many members does TechRepublic have? Looks pretty small. The forums are absolutely horrible. Layout and organization is pretty poor.

12. AJ
    

    October 9th, 2006 at 1:06 pm

    Interesting, ITtoolbox (www.ittoolbox.com) has been doing this exact thing for eight years with tremendous sucess. Here’s a recent ClickZ article that highlights their newest professional netowrking feature that I think is what CNET is trying to accomplish:

    http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623578

13. Eric Barnes
    

    October 9th, 2006 at 5:04 pm

    Now if they could just get that stock price back up. The stock option backdating was a mess.

14. Stephen Howard-Sarin
    

    October 9th, 2006 at 10:48 pm

    Folks, you don’t go to CNET.com to find out everything at CNET Networks. (Just like you don’t go to NBC.com to see everything at NBC Universal, or Time.com to see everything at Time Warner, or MTV.com to see… you get the idea.)

    TechRepublic is targeted specifically at IT professionals. It bears little or no resemblence to CNET.com, which about everything in personal technology.

    Oh, and AJ: IT Toolbox is about the same age as TechRepublic and a LOT less popular. Ditto for Experts Exchange. We’re all in the same basic business of attracting and serving IT pros. And I guess it’s no surprise that we see the same opportunities in bringing more Web 2.0 features to this user base. May the best site win!

    Drama: TechRepublic has mover 4 million registered users.

15. jhatak.com
    

    October 11th, 2006 at 7:46 am

    I am a happy user of Upload.com. And nothing beats a new software launch than putting it on Download.com /Upload.com.

16. Rod Trent
    

    October 14th, 2006 at 5:27 am

    (Stephen Howard-Sarin ): 4 million “registered” users, sure. But, how many of those 4 million visit every day? As we all know, “registered” users means nothing. You may have someone in your database that registered in 1998, moved out of the IT field in 1999, and hasn’t been back to the site since then. A lot of sites have been doing the social networking thing for years, but it’s only now getting recognized as a valid direction. A lot of these sites still do it better without a Web 2.0 interface.