Friday, May 16, 2008
- I think Wired’s epicenter blog needs to clarify one of today’s posts a bit:
Big Payday for Web 2.0The biggest web deal announced today was CBS’ plan to buy CNET, one of the last independent online content companies, for $1.8 billion, or $11.50 per share. The valuation represents a healthy 45 percent premium over yesterday’s closing price, and it’s a couple hundred million dollars more than the $1.6 billion CNET spent on its ZDNet acquisition eight years ago.
Let’s be clear: CNET (formerly C|Net, as I recall) is considered Web 2.0? As in the same CNET Central I used to watch Richard Hart, Gina St. John, Ryan Seacrest, and John C. Dvorak on back in 1997? I just don’t see CNET as being anything other than Web 1.0. Period. They are still a professional journalist-driven site, even they allow a few user comments here-and-there. There’s no social aspect to the site to speak of. Just because it was a big acquisition of a mostly internet/tech company doesn’t make it fall into the latest buzzword space. You’d think Betsy Schiffman, and Wired, would know better than to just throw around hip labels without thinking. To be fair, the article also mentions Comcast’s acquisition of Plaxo (which has me a bit concerned about the privacy of my friends and family) but clearly is focusing on the big-dollar deal of the day, here. It appears a better title would have been "Web 1.0 finally paying off." [0 # ]
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