Portals Take On Look And Feel Of Networks In Pusuit Of Ad Dollars

AOL, MSN, Google, Yahoo “are beginning to act, look and feel like networks in everything they do.” As USA Today’s Jefferson Graham writes, they want be programmers (and not the C++ kind) for users who are connected all the time. Among the clues: Yahoo’s hiring of broadcast programmer Lloyd Braun to head and staff up its media group; the 15 web shows AOL has in production; advertising is increasingly video driven.
But it’s not about recreating today’s broadcast nets. Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s chief product officer, describes his company’s efforts as a “connect the dots” kind of network: “We’re about connecting the dots. Taking services on one part of our network and creating a new value for it by tying it together with another. That creates a better user experience, and more fully engages them.”
Charlene Li, analyst, Forrester: “Who’s to say we won’t have a Yahoo channel on the TV, and an NBC network online? Whether it originates on TV or the Internet won’t matter.”

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