There are some very interesting discussions going on in the blogosphere regarding the crumbling magazine industry and the venerable Business Week publication in general.
It seems along with demise of several Conde Nast Publications announced this week, BusinessWeek’s future seems to be in doubt.
There are a few reports out today that the one and only buyer for this publication maybe Bloomberg LP.
The problem for the publisher is that Bloomberg LP, according to those reports is putting the value of the purchase squarley on the domain name itself and not on the staff or the actual publication.
“””Bloomberg LP remains the front-runner, although the company is expected to only take on the BusinessWeek name and Web site, and none of its staff or bureaus.””
Very interesting.
If a company like Bloomberg thinks the most valuable asset such a publisher owns is its domain name, that has to be very good news for the domain industry.
Print media really screwed up by not buying their city-name.com names and the very top .com generics for their area of biz in the 90s when they were still cheap; and launching them as internet brands using minimal stuff and costs the way Castello bros did.
The value of print media company today is basically the value of real estate and the goodwill value of their brands like BusinessWeek, minus their debt and the cost of firing all employees. Most print media companies have negative value by this valuation.
Look at Playgirl- dropped print- now web-only but all it takes it one pr boost like this Levi Johnston thing….
Jon:
Very true. And it’s scary to think how that they could have bought us all out for a song in 1998 (we had no idea back then how much money we could make). But, as Michael and I will explain to the media when we address them at the Borrell Associates conference in NYC in February, we DID try to speak with them. In fact, I met with Gannett’s newspaper The Desert Sun in Palm Springs in late 1999 because I had this great idea that we should combine forces (by then we were starting to chew into their advertising revenue). And what did they tell me (and most other US city.com owners)? “Um…that’s nice, but you’ll need to speak to our IT Department. ”
As most entreprenuers know, if you really want to inspire someone all you need to do is disrespect them.
Hello Mike,
I have no idea why my opinions are being censored out from your blog? Is this just a software glitch? or am I making too much sense for your web masters comfort? Please respond back to me as I am wondering if I should continue contributing my valuable perspectives on your platform ?
Gratefully, Jeff
Domainers are once again wrong
Once again it shows they have little business acumen and miss the big picture completely.
Bloomberg would not want to take on BW staff b/c they ALREADY have their own reporters. It’s called saving money by cutting overlapping costs.
In short: they wish to buy the BRAND – which includes the domain.
Same thing when Murdoch purchased WSJ – and laid off most of the overlapping jobs – for the BRAND.
Hello Mike,
It comes as no surprise to us that user business channel names end up with large intrinsic values. The keyword business or Biz, contained in a user channel address is a great lead in to prime user channel addresses. The word business is a powerful brand in itself. Business.com, BusinessWeek.com, Bizjournals.com, BizRate.com etc. etc. are examples of media driven user channel addresses.
If you are in business and you want a business leader image in the ongoing digital revolution, it just might be a good idea to brand yourself that way. The media companies are hungry to master this thing called user channel dominance. That is why business.com in its raw form without web content commanded such a high premium. So for BusinessWeek.com to follow siute comes as no surprise to us at all.
Gratefully, Jeff
Quote-
“Once again it shows they (domainers) have little business acumen and miss the big picture completely.”
“It’s called saving money by cutting overlapping costs”
Domainers understand branding very well.
And, they also understand the use of synergy.
Your comment could be erroneously and maliciously applied to any subgroup in the internet category.
Jeff
We do not censor opinions. If your comment has a link in it, it has to be manual approved and I’m only online about 12 hours a day
Some domains, especially brand related or domains related to 2010 new tech releases will continue to grow in value.
If you read the news you will see News Corp is trying to put out their own e-reader, google, barnes&noble, amazon are pushing ebooks, and Apple and Microsoft both have new tablets for reading ebooks, playing music and more, Disney has new digital books and bought the license to Marvel Comics.
These are categories that were not hot in prior years and open up a whole new line of domain buying and keyword domains related to those new devices and electronic books.
Nice to see tech moving forward with new toys. As they do they open up new sought names and 2010 should be a boom for those in the right categories.
I have never never gone to any of those sites (Business.com, BusinessWeek.com, Bizjournals.com, BizRate.com etc. etc) cos they are BS sites…useless info to me and to most people!
All they have is propaganda news.
Hello Mike I apologize for jumping to conclusions, I am sorry. I appreciate you explaining the process to me. I had no idea links required special attention. Thank you for your efforts!
I enjoy your blog and always look forward to the thought provoking subjects you bring up, congratulations on such a fine job.
Gratefully, Jeff
@BullS – You say those business news sites are BS sites. Bizjournals is definitely not BS. They have objective business news and events for different regions (and industries) across the country. Very high caliber. I can’t speak to the other ones though.
Aggro is right – this is a long established brand, with equity, not a domain name. Why is there always a tendency to twist clear brand stories into domain stories? Posts like this diminish domain industry credibility. It’s wishful thinking. But it does speak of the value of domains in terms of the equity built into a name over time, though domain bloggers rarely acknowledge this aspect. If anything, this purchase is good for web and brand strategists who are able to assess the value of domains from a brand and/or traffic perspective, which most domainers are in no position or capable of doing.
BizJournals is a highly respected network of biz publications. I could see bizjournals.com going for $150 on dnforum with no business behind it. But it is obviously worth a lot more than that.