This March 13, 2006 article from the NYTimes will disappear behind the paywall shortly, but I’ll link to it all the same, for two reasons.
- To point out how a multi-brand property gets boiled down to a single audience
- To bewail style guides, although I love them dearly in other contexts
The article: “Hungry Media Companies Find a Meager Menu of Web Sites to Buy“
Perhaps the site most discussed and analyzed as a potential major takeover is Cnet Networks, the operator of News.com, a site focusing on business and technology news. The price tag for Cnet, which is publicly traded, with a market value of around $2 billion, would be $2.5 billion to $3 billion, said Mark May, an analyst for Needham & Company who covers Internet services and digital media.
Cnet is “too expensive” to be a ready takeover candidate, Mr. May said.
Other analysts said that Cnet had prompted much debate among major media companies, which had been unable to determine how lucrative the Cnet audience could become.
These rumors have been published before. Whatever.
My first point is that CNET Networks operates more than CNET News.com, but a reporter is most likely to know one of our news sites.
My second point is that seeing “Cnet” bugs me terribly. Years of insisting that it’s CNET (all caps) cannot fight style guides at publications, which (understandably) make it a policy not to capitalize names which are not abbreviations. (It’s more nuanced than that, but I’m not a copyeditor, to everyone’s relief.)
It must grate on Yahoo! that every publication drops the exclamation point from their company name. But it’s less egregious, visually, than “Cnet” versus CNET.
Note to self: when naming anything, consider not only the URL (my first instinct these days), but check the AP Style Guide, too. Maybe Chicago while I’m at it. 😉