Lycos, search engine portal and owner of Wired Magazine, has announced its intention to rebrand as a media company. According to the press release Lycos has released a service called Planet, which enables its users to create “mini sites” that include photos, blogs, slideshows, animation, special effects and other multimedia. ClickZ referred to Planet as a “social interaction platform”.
I love the press release headline: “NEW PLANETS DISCOVERED ON LYCOS, Revolutionary Interactive Platform Redefines Personal Expression”. Yeeeeaa….
The Washington Post ends it story with this:
“Lycos, best known for its roots in the search business, is hoping to relaunch itself as a media company, eventually reaching out to self-publishing writers, artists and musicians, as well as major book publishers and entertainment studios to become a kind of Web-based studio for its 22 million-strong audience.”
Sounds great – and very similar to what Yahoo! is doing with its media strategy. Read this excerpt from the ClickZ article and tell me if it sounds familiar:
“[Lycos’] vision will include search, but will hinge on the building, distributing and consuming of content. Some of that content will be user-generated, from blogs on Lycos’ Tripod and Angelfire networks. Other content will be created by Lycos or will come from strategic partners like record labels, book publishers, and movie studios.”
I suppose this is a natural extension for a search company that was/is big on content portals and owns Wired, so it’ll be interesting to watch Lycos’ progress. I think Yahoo! has a more organic and exciting approach to new media generation and distribution, with greater use of Web 2.0 technologies such as RSS and APIs. But it’s an open market right now.
