Interview: Vivek Shah, GM, Fortune/Money Group, Time Warner

[By Staci D. Kramer] Vivek Shah, GM, Fortune/Money Group, came up for air early this evening long enough for an interview about plans to merge Time Inc.’s business magazine sites Fortune.com, Business2.com and FSB.com (Fortune Small Business) with Time-Turner joint venture CNNMoney.com. Surprisingly, given the traditional turf protection and internal politics, Shah says it wasn’t difficult to get a buy in for the move. “Everyone involved from each of the magazines, the editing side, the publishing side … everyone saw the power of having this all in one mega-site.” Why now? “I think the time is right. We have a great vision for what we want to do. CNNMoney.com is already successful.”

On advertising: Shah says there will be a dedicated team selling for CNNMoney.com but that Time Inc., Turner and AOL will have access to the inventory. The ability to integrate print and broadcast sales with the website will be a priority although Shah realizes not every advertiser wants sweeping access. Primarily, he says, “advertisers are looking for scale so they can actually segment; you can’t sdegment something niche.”

On site metrics: In July, according to Nielsen/NetRating numbers, CNNMoney.com drew 8.276 million uniques, while Fortune.com (including FSB.com) had 1.751. million uniques. (Business2.com hasn’t been measured by N/NR, according to Shah.) The unduplicated numbers for CNNMoney.com and Fortune.com tell the story here — 9.2 million. The goal is to have at least 10 million uniques a month after the sites merge but Shah is really looking for growth in time spent on the site; he wants to be the user’s business and finance destination “at the beginning of the day, in the middle of the day, at the end of the day.” Current visitors to CNNMoney.com average 16 minutes; he thinks that can be expanded with a consolidated site that has “all the full range of applications and reasons why people go” to business and finance sites.

On the user experience: “It all starts with the user experience,” says Shah, noting some comments I made earlier in the day. “You do want different ways for people to interact with the site. We’ve done a lot of research; we’ve looked at user behavior. The business audience doesn’t want to jump around.”

On opening the walled garden: Fortune.com was the first Time Inc. site to go behind the wall, requiring a subscription for access to most content. Now it will be one of the first Time Inc. sites to open up. Breaking news and current articles will be accessible — as has been the case on CNNMoney.com — but archives and some features will be behind the wall. “As they roam around and they find something (behind the wall), that’s when you can say they now need to become a paying customer. …It’s all about serving your audience in a respectful, smart way.”

On competition: Dow Jones MarketWatch.com, Forbes.com, BusinessWeek.com, Yahoo Finance — all are competition in an increasingly active market. “It validates the space in many ways. I think it’s good to see. I tend to get nervous of markets where you have the only site.”

(Disclosure: I’ve written for Business 2.0 in the past year and may repeat the experience. It’s been more than a decade since my income relied on Time Inc. I’ve long argued that Time Inc. magazines should not put breaking or current news behind a pay wall.)

Related: Time Inc’s Business Websites To Merge With CNNMoney.com

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