Another interesting article from AdAge today on how “smaller” dot-coms are beating bigger traditional media brands in terms of web traffic. According to the article, largely because content of online brands is written with the medium in mind.
“It’s a totally different medium, and the web-based companies have designed and built content for this medium,” said Larry Kramer, founder of MarketWatch, now owned by Dow Jones, and former president of CBS Digital Media. “Traditional media companies are still trying to figure out how they translate what they do for the web.”
The article points to user generated content, community involvement and search engine optimization as keys to success, creating more pages and higher search engine ranking.
It’s no longer just a site that creates content; it’s also one that aggregates it. And it’s not only a destination with professionally produced content; it’s also one to which thousands contribute. At the end of the day, anyone with content can battle for ad dollars.
In AdAge’s top web brands list. Search/portal sites like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, MySpace claim the top five, but community sites like Wikipedia, YouTube and About.com along with Weather Channel and CNN round out the top ten.
An interesting article, indeed. I find that second bit you quoted amusing…
“It’s no longer just a site that creates content; it’s also one that aggregates it.”
Man, traditional media really needs to pick up the pace. I mean, they’ve only been aggregating content (like AP sotries) for what, 150 years now?
I think the whole “traiditonal media” vs. “new media” is a silly debate, myself. Traditional media companies are just as able to compete as new media companies, if they’re smart. A better way to write this would be that stupid companies don’t do as well online as smart ones — but then that’s not very interesting.
It’s definitely about knowing your medium and this argument can be extended into many different disciplines. eg. print designers vs web designers.
Large media companies think getting ‘more’ content out there is better, despite that content being trapped inside video, audio and flash applications.
Being smarter about unleashing or exposing that information (for accessibility as well!) doesn’t happen to organically in these corporations.
The idea of ‘brochure-ware 2.0’ kind of sums it up for me :-)
Interesting article - about a year ago I tried to google ‘online agency’ in Sydney and none of the top ten online agencies appeared in the results - probably because they all have flashy showy websites that are devoid of content and not written for SEO (using flash).
I ended up going with a small little “freelance” style agency, predominantly because if they’ve figured out SEO they would be much more likely to be online savvy than the bigger agencies that can’t even be found.
@ Fred F - True. ‘cept we’re not a media company. Not yet anyway. ;0)
This is about SEO? Or is it about content? Or both? Good SEO is good content, all it takes is having that content and knowing what to do with it. As Jeff points out, traditional media could easily compete - if they knew what to do. Not that it’s rocket science.
I agree with this.
This is how it should be. The better skilled should be the ones on top.
I’ve gotta agree with Keith here.