Digg"For the past 18 months, we've been serving all the users cookies, and
we build the page dynamically based on the cookie we see coming in. You
may think it's no problem to recreate this. But if the Times and other
folks that were in the [buyout] process really thought that they could
recreate this that easily, they would not be stepping up to pay a
premium. Oh, and by the way, there's the execution risk. Over the next
three years, what are the odds that you're going to do this well and
wind up in the same spot?"
The cost of replication seems to be the driving force behind the purchase price. John Battelle noted that NYT probably wanted to get into micropublishing for a long time but that its culture was not prepared to make the commitment. $410 million is a pretty big commitment. Of course, cash is much easier to throw at a problem than high paid executives, long meetings, strategy sessions and valuable tech staff resources.
"About provides the Times a platform to explore microcontent without
having to - necessarily - extend the Times' brand to everything. And as
I've told anyone who will listen to me, I think microcontent is key to
winning in the Web 2.0 publishing world. When publishing folks from
mainstream newspapers tell me that blogging is far too small to
possibly impact their businesses, I often ask this question: Would you
rather have scores of microsites with a combined revenue of $15
million, profits of $3-5 million, and a double digit growth rate, or a
newspaper group with revenues of $50 million, profits of $5 million,
but declining growth?"
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