CNET Is Bleeding Web2.0 Traffic

Tags: CNET + Shelby Bonnie

Kevom posted on Oct 13th 2006 4:46PM; via techcrunch.com/2006/10/13/cnet...

In TechCrunch today, Michael Arrington writes about CNET's difficult times.

Recent data suggests that CNET’s overall traffic isn’t just flat, it’s declining at an alarmingly swift pace. A Jeffries & Company report released on Wednesday points to a third quarter 50% drop in CNET traffic compared to the same period in 2005, including a whopping 69% drop in traffic at WebShots.

A closer look at Comscore data for CNET shows September 2006 traffic for all CNET properties at 616 million page views, v. 1.37 billion page views in September 2005. Individual properties like Webshots went from 971 million monthly page views to just 213 million. ZDNET fell from 12 million to 8 million page views. CNET reviews went from 31 million page views to 24 million. The list goes on. All major CNET properties are either flat or down, and some are down substantially. The lone exception is download.com, which had 84 million page views in Sept ‘06, up from 70 million in September ‘05.

I stopped reading CNET a long time ago and I think they definitely need to work on the synergy between properties.

Comments

	sleeper says: i don't think cnet is going away. my favorite stop is cnet tv - have you checked that out ? i love it. more sites should go toward television on the internet. Posted: 10/13/06 18:23
	Kevom says: I like Buzz Out Loud and I agree about cnet tv, but cnet hasn't reacted fast enough to the Web2.0 evolution (blogs, social networking, etc) on top of the bad news: http://web2.commongate....ions_Probe Posted: 10/13/06 18:34
	george says: cnet is probably the easiest short on the street right now (april 2007). an eroding business model, useless sites with not enough traffic to even sell advertising for (metacritic and mysimon 2 examples) and a p/e ratio above 40!!!!! No wonder most of the top execs bailed ship in late 06. Posted: 03/18/07 14:12

sleeper says:

i don't think cnet is going away. my favorite stop is cnet tv - have you checked that out ? i love it. more sites should go toward television on the internet.
Posted: 10/13/06 18:23

Kevom says:

I like Buzz Out Loud and I agree about cnet tv, but cnet hasn't reacted fast enough to the Web2.0 evolution (blogs, social networking, etc)
on top of the bad news: http://web2.commongate....ions_Probe
Posted: 10/13/06 18:34

george says:

cnet is probably the easiest short on the street right now (april 2007). an eroding business model, useless sites with not enough traffic to even sell advertising for (metacritic and mysimon 2 examples) and a p/e ratio above 40!!!!! No wonder most of the top execs bailed ship in late 06.
Posted: 03/18/07 14:12