What will CNET sell off next?

October 26, 2007

I’m kinda glad to hear that CNET is selling off Webshots.  It’s a shame they could not get a better dollar amount, a la the ridiculous valuation Microsoft gave to Facebook earlier this week. 

Still this is probably a good move.  Webshots was really purchased for only one reason: traffic.  But it’s low-value traffic and, as the company has discovered, can be hit hard as users drift off to the better photo and social sites on the Web.

I think they still have additional domains and sites they should sell or consolidate.  First get rid of Search.com — if you’re not going to make proper use of the domain sell it to some crazy speculator for millions and let them do something with it. 

And while you’re at it, merge ZDNet into CNET.  I mean all that’s on ZDNet are News.com stories and blogs.  Those should be back under the main CNET umbrella, keeping it a separate brand when it’s the same basic content doesn’t make sense.

They also need to re-think how MySimon fits.  For example here’s a post on Crave about Guitar Hero III.  On such a ripe search term as Guitar Hero, why doesn’t this page surface some MySimon shopping links for Guitar Hero?  That’s idiotic, they have all this target-rich content and they’re not putting the right contextual ads against that content.

There’s still a future for CNET.  But the world is rapidly closing in around them.  They need to put more muscle behind fewer properties.  So they can get it right instead of letting their properties languish into near oblivion as they did with Webshots.