Only three months after the British newspaper publisher The Guardian Group bought Rafat Ali’s ContentNext Media and his collection of blogs for a reported $30 million, one of those blogs is sputtering badly. The blog in question is contentSutra, the Indian counterpart to its bigger and better known brother, paidContent (both cover the business of digital media). Until recently, contentSutra was ContentNext’s second biggest blog, even beating out mocoNews.
But if you look at it now, traffic has dropped off a cliff. Posts are sporadic, and mostly consist of news roundups or the occasional post from the editors at paidContent. ContentNext and the Guardian are currently in talks with media companies in India for possible syndication and cross-promotion deals. Rumors are going around that ContentNext has been in talks with HT Media (publisher of the Hindustan Times), 9.9 Media, and others. We also received an unconfirmed tip that the Guardian is trying to unload contentSutra all together, but Rafat Ali says that is not true.
In any event, the site is not doing as well as it once did. The editor who built up contentSutra for two years, Nikhil Pahwa, left at the end of May, and launched his own competing blog, Medianama, a month later on June 27. Pahwa didn’t have any equity in ContentNext and was frustrated by the lack of a plan to take it to the next level. The Guardian deal was announced two weeks after he launched Medianama. Pahwa tells me:
About the Guardian deal: I found out about the deal, like everyone else, on the day that it was announced. All I knew before that is that ContentNext was raising another round of VC funding. The interest in the market is evident from the fact that contentSutra was number two among the ContentNext properties in terms of traffic at one point in time.
One of the reasons (but obviously not the main driver) for the deal was the international exposure that contentSutra would provide. In an interview on paidContent, Guardian Media Group CEO Carolyn McCall explained the appeal of ContentNext’s Indian media property:
International plans: The common interests the companies have in UK, US and India are a major part of the fit. McCall: “India is an emerging market and doing incredibly well, I should think, and there are great opportunities there … I think we could help each other in India because we’ve been looking at that market long and hard.”
After Pahwa left, Ali started looking for a new editor for contentSutra. He is still looking. Meanwhile, Medianama is putting out more posts a day (and better ones) on the Indian digital media scene than contentSutra. A blog is only as good as its writers.
That’s the thing about blogs. They are incredible efficient from a labor standpoint. You can launch a media property covering an entire sub-continent with one editor. The flip side is that when you build a brand or sub-brand around one person, that brand takes a hit when that person walks out the door. (This is an issue all blogs have to deal with, and is why giving out equity to writers and editors is a good idea).
Blogs are only as interesting as the amount of interest the writers put into it. That is very true! I love TC, because it hasn’t been bought out and MA’s still here.
I was a regular reader of contentsutra.com from last 2years but after Nikhil left there is nothing much interesting news on the site. Since then I switched to WATBlog.com, medianama and alootechie..
I personally feel most of the blogs are good till they are independent..
Nikhil was doing a great job @ ContentSutra and when he left, CS lost a huge asset.
Its a shame that for all the effort that Nikhil put into CS, he wasnt offered any equity. I’ve gotten a chance to interact with him on several occasions, and I’ve great admiration for the guy. I’m pretty sure that his effort @ Medianama will pay off in the long run.
Pranav
StartupDunia
ContentNext did send a team to India to begin expansion of the ContentSutra site in collaboration with Guardian. We plan to double down on our ContentSutra business — recruiting a new team of journalists and business people as well as hosting events for our loyal digital community. You can expect to see our site accelerate our leading voice in digital content with a winning team of reporters and journalists providing insights, breaking stories and shaping the future dialogue of the India digital frontier.
Sounds like you’re regurgitating a press release
Where’s the passion?
Good luck with your moves though.
Seriously mate- don’t tell us about WHAT you plan to do. Tell us WHEN we can expect the changes.
I’m pretty close to getting rid of my ContentSutra RSS feed….but haven’t yet, because it’s been on my Live Bookmarks for god-knows-how-long.
So, don’t be a bore…excite me…tell me the WHEN and the HOW.
It sounds like Mike holds a grudge against Rafat and now Erick is doing his boss’ bidding, posting a worthless attack piece.
I lost respect for Rafat when he started targeting TechCrunch with factually incorrect personal attacks , but I don’t begrudge his success at all. The guy will do whatever it takes to win.
So what was this bad Karma you’re talking about, anyway? The post doesn’t elaborate on that, at all.
I agree that CS isn’t doing so hot right now, but perhaps you could’ve just highlighted that, without attributing it to bad karma.
You’re not begrudging Rafat’s success. You’re gloating about his recent failure.
And you don’t need me to tell you that it’s not a very nice thing to do….
All you needed to do was title the post differently, from “Bad Karma At contentSutra. Site Sputters After Being Bought By The Guardian.” to: “ContentSutra sputters after being bought by the Guardian.”.
That would’ve been factual, that would’ve been journalistic, and that would’ve been consistent with your track record of providing un-biased reviews.
no, not gloating, didn’t write the post. and this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the sale.
all of our reviews are biased. always have been.
Well, the author of the post sure didn’t qualify/elaborate on “bad karma”…YOU did, in the comment above. I re-read the post a few times to see what the “bad karma” was, and didn’t find out until I read your comment.
And your reviews generally hold objective bias(a la PERSPECTIVE)..not a mis-aligned personal bias. Let’s not play word games.
My point simply is, if you’re talking about “bad karma” in the title of the post, then tell us about the “bad karma” in the body of the post.
Here, let me summarize this post for you:
“Only three months …beating out mocoNews.”
>> contentsutra is sputtering…
“But if you look …is not true.”
>> sputtering = few/bad posts, rumors + syndication announcements, et al.
“In any event….one point in time.”
>> former contentsutra spearhead says that he left beause there were no apparent plans for the future.
“One of the reasons …that market long and hard.”
>> irrelevant quote from Guardian CEO
“After Pahwa left…as good as its writers.
>> a blog is as good as its writers..DUH. Oh and Rafat’s looking for a new writer.
“That’s the thing about blogs. They are incredible efficient from a labor standpoint. You can launch a media property covering an entire sub-continent with one editor. The flip side is that when you build a brand or sub-brand around one person, that brand takes a hit when that person walks out the door. (This is an issue all blogs have to deal with, and is why giving out equity to writers and editors is a good idea).
>> blogs are efficient(Duh). Contentsutra suffered from Nikhil’s departure. Please give equity to your writers.
WHERE’S THE BAD KARMA??
p.s.: i’m not trying to be an a**hole, although i think i just became one.
but i want you to know that you have a million plus readers, and spreading negativity isn’t the way to go.
THAT, my brothers, is bad karma.
Nikhil, along with PV Sahad was responsible for making ContentSutra the must visit site for Digital Entrepreneurs and Wannapreneurs from India.
It’s unfortunate that they were not provided any equity in ContentNext .
It may be Bad Karma for ContentSutra, but I see good Karma all over for Nikhil & PV Sahad.
Nikhil has launched MediaNama.com and Sahad a quality site on Indian PE, M&A’s at http://www.VCCircle.com
PC is one of my favorite blogs but it’s shocking that after two years of building up one of their best properties, no equity upside could’ve been worked out. (I’m sure TC isn’t immune to this either). In any case, any worthwhile editor contentNext now approaches is going to see MediaNama’s rapid rise, and perhaps determine it’s worth the risk to go it alone. Nikhil’s most likely having the time of his life. Since the blog’s launch, he’s probably earning a living by now (which can only grow over time), now has complete control, and gets the added benefit that each post he writes he now actually owns.
If you switch the region from “India” to “All”, not only are there no craters but the traffic is sliced in half. Seems like something is broken with Google’s stats here.
Not sure whats the point you are trying to make here..(sunday rant?)..
Maybe that’s why you will realize that your boss, Mike won’t let you ‘take complete control of what you write.
Erick has fully authority to do whatever he wants on this blog. He can take off all his clothes, run around naked and live blog it if he wants to.
I vote against that.
The graph doesn’t look too reliable. Were the previous two drops also real? Probably not. Alexa shows ContentSutra flat to slightly down. Not much of an article here.
Rafat should have given Nikhil a stake and retained him… i think thats when everyone knew that CS wont be able to retain its edge…
Cheers,
Kunal
http://www.kunalsheth.in
The traffic seems to have ‘dropped of the cliff’ two earlier times as well. So, this time is no different. Nikhil was definitely an asset to CS and they should have retained him. CS almost had all the breaking news first, now no one has. Most of the players now use/have similar sources and no one seems to have a good strategy in place.
Raghuvir
http://www.blogadda.com
“I lost respect for Rafat when he started targeting TechCrunch with factually incorrect personal attacks , but I don’t begrudge his success at all. The guy will do whatever it takes to win.”
Of course Mike your not bitter or two-faced having never made personal infactual attacks at a competitor.
He’s never censored user comments, when they make him look bad either.
Which is why we still hold him in high esteem.
I don’t believe I’m two-faced, I tend to say on this blog exactly what I say everywhere else. And I’ve never knowingly written something factually incorrect for any reason.
hmm…I am confused…what was the purpose of this blog?
ouch
That’s right Michael…Tell em’…:-P
lol
too bad..
http://gatesand...s.blogspot.com/
When I want digital media news, I go to paidcontent. When I want to see a catty blogger use any excuse he can to attack other media outlets, I go to TC. I’m really glad that in this collapsing economy, I still have one constant — Arrington and his minions publishing complete crap under the guise of journalism.
Sure, contentsutra has sucked since Pahwa left and of course, he was a great asset to the company. But what on earth is the point of this post other than to trash Ali/his company and call it “bad karma”?
Seriously, the traffic has crashed to the botom
Why this happend ?
Change of masters…