Personalization Nation: Content and Technology Drive the Next Wave

Marta Wohrle

Thursday, October 7, 2010 My direct experience with venture capital firms is that they don’t much like content. I’ve never done an empirical study on how many digital companies have been invested in, but they must be outweighed by tech start-ups 10-1. Speaking of start-ups, they haven’t had much love from VCs either in the last couple of years. Content start-ups…Forget it.

With a couple of venture-backed launches and old media companies buying up some of the new ones, things may perhaps be changing. According to analysis by Jordan, Edmiston Group, things most certainly are with a 52% increase in deal volume over the same period last year, and a 291% surge in deal value.

Still, I was surprised when Spanfeller Media Group surprisingly bucked the trend to enter a crowded online food content market backed with $2 million from Softbank. The Daily Meal is due to launch mid-October, and its aspirations to be a food “mega-site” got a shot in the arm with its first acquisition, the New York restaurant review site Always Hungry.

Less about scale and talent (and the more interesting for it) was Time Inc.’s acquisition of shopping site StyleFeeder as the e-commerce arm of InStyle.com. As integrations go, it all looks a bit "tokenistic," with Stylefeeder relegated to the bottom of InStyle’s shopping page, which in turn has its logo on the bottom of every Stylefeeder page. Still, it’s the early days, and the potential for the two businesses is exciting. Stylefeeder claims it can learn its users fashion preferences and make relevant recommendations. Think Pandora for clothes.

Imagine if InStyle.com’s readers could click an “I like this” button on fashion editorial and have those feed into the Stylefeeder search engine. It would personalize the InStyle experience for its readers, as well taking the brand directly into retail—arguably where it should have been all along.

Online site Total Beauty has grown through a series of acquisitions to have a reasonable foothold in the online women’s market. These, too, have been mostly about scale and talent, but its most recent acquisition brings a new twist. By buying celebrity news and lifestyle site LimeLife, Total Beauty is also getting a social shopping service called MySnaps, with which users can create, share and shop from personal shopping wish lists via the Web and mobile.

Both MySnaps and Stylefeeder are about the personalization and increased efficiency of e-commerce. The Washington Post’s move to buy iCurrent is also, I think, about personalization and efficiency. iCurrent allows users to aggregate news based on specified topic areas and update pages by adding or removing content. Again, like Pandora or Stylefeeder, it learns what you like in order to personalize the experience. The Washington Post is also, along with other newspaper publishers, investing in a start-up called Ongo that will allow users to share content from multiple publishers.

I see a theme emerging that it is about integrating content with technologies that allow each user to get an experience that works for just them, whether it is to get information, or act on it by making a purchase.

The other day, paidContent predicted that some of the next big digital content businesses to go on the block would include the likes of The Knot and WebMD. This is surely correct, but if Condé Nast adds The Knot to its bridal brands, it won’t really change much. Mostly, it will still be chasing ad dollars. On the other hand, if Time Inc. gets the integration of Stylefeeder right, it could be the start of a new business.

Minsider columnist Marta Wohrle is president of Accord Media and the publisher of Truth In Aging, among other digital content titles. Previously she was SVP, digital media, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., and director of Mercer Management Consulting.

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