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Chris Cramer, the president of CNN International, says he believes that most news sites will soon begin charging fees, since advertising revenues alone have not been enough to keep internet news companies in the black. In a speech during a broadcast conference in Australia, Cramer said that web sites and news organizations would be left with little choice, having pumped millions into their internet sides without seeing any financial returns. "The revenues that we all aspire to are not there. They weren't there before Sept. 11, let alone after Sept. 11," he says. CNN, he says, does not have plans to make people pay for access to its web sites, adding that money troubles don't mean that organizations should give up entirely on offering online news.
ElleGirl.com offers instant messaging for teens
Before the rise of the internet, teenage girls were known for their practice of participating in seemingly endless telephone chats. Once the internet came along, instant messaging emerged as the hot new way for teens to converse, gossip, flirt and support one another. A whopping 74 percent of teenage web users use instant messaging. ElleGirl.com, the web site of Elle Girl magazine, is taking advantage of its audience's interest by offering an IM client of its own, ElleGirlBuddy. The messaging tool is the result of a partnership with ActiveBuddy, a company that produces so-called interactive agents. The ElleGirlBuddy will let ElleGirl.com users communicate with one another in addition to giving them instant, customized access to content from the site.
The Shat is back, shilling for Priceline
William Shatner is going where one man, namely himself, has gone before: the position of Priceline.com pitchman. The actor, who's best known for his spoken-word albums and his role as Captain James T. Kirk in the "Star Trek" TV show and movies, has returned to the Priceline.com fold. He'll be doing radio ads for the name-your-price travel site, which ended its earlier relationship with Shatner last year. Shatner's tongue-in-cheek beatnik-poetry ads were succeeded by a radically different approach, the "Let's Jet Set" campaign, which used voiceovers from "Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker. Shatner's relationship with Priceline appeared to have soured when the company's finances and stock price plunged amid the dot.com downturn and recession. Shatner was paid at least partially in shares of Priceline. Now in the $4 range, shares remain far off their high of $165 in early 2000 but have recovered from their low of $1.80. In a Priceline statement, Shatner says that he is more than a mere celebrity spokesman, he's also a Priceline customer.
Virgin shutters its money-losing portal
Virgin has abandoned its foray into the portal space. The media conglomerate’s portal, Virgin.net, is pulling the plug on its money-losing internet content division. Henceforth the game plan is to work harder to draw more people to its potentially more lucrative internet service provider business, 24Seven. The Virgin.net enterprise was intended to rival the AOLs and Yahoos of the world, but like so many other also-rans, Virgin.net never really caught on. The web site will continue to exist, but with no original material. Instead, Virgin is looking to fill the space with syndicated content. The portal offered channels dedicated to travel, health and music. As a result of the drastic cutbacks, quite a few positions will be eliminated.
Lycos will charge for prominent search results
As a now yearlong advertising slump stretches the companies that provide search engines to the breaking point, Terra Lycos has decided it would rather bend. The Madrid-based media company's Lycos search engine now accepts fees for guaranteed placement in searches. Looking to avoid the bankruptcy that has enthralled rival Excite.com, the Waltham, Mass.-based Lycos will focus on recruiting small to midsize web site proprietors looking to add traffic and customers. The move aims to diversify a revenue flow now almost entirely dependent on the whims of the ad market. Some critics have attacked for-sale search engines for providing irrelevant and misleading results. Lycos contends that its search engine does not distinguish between paid and non-paid sites, so its integrity is maintained. Other sites point out that their paid results are clearly identified and should not be confused with the real findings.
February 26, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
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