Add Conde Nast, the huge publisher, to the list of companies that “get” the value and importance of domains.
They own some tremendous brands and in most cases the online and offline magazines to go with it.
Some of Conde Nast’s domain holdings are GQ.com, Style.com, Details.com, Concierge.com, Gourmet.com, Brides.com, Epicurious.com, Wired.com, Portfolio.com, Flip.com, NewYorker.com and of course Vogue.com
So this is a company that has great domains and are using them in conjunction with online and offline properties.
They own some great domains, I was actually wanting to speak to them about some generics that Im brokering that would fit with there business.
I wonder when and how they got all of these names?
Regards,
Rob
Great domain properties…but even better content and development. These guys are one of the top publishers (on-line and off-line) in the world…they could make SideWalkTrash.com a profitable and heavily visited site. None the less, it is great for a leader in the publishing industry to show how a tremendous domain name can further add value to your publication, even when you have the best content and viewership to begin with.
Andrew
CondeNast always charged their Vogue and other print advertisers very high ad rates. Their ad revenues have collapsed so now CondeNast may be in serious trouble. They have a bloated budget that assumes much higher ad revenue from magazines and newspapers.
Websites are very small part of CondeNast business. From what I read pretty much all their websites have always lost money. The problem for CondeNast and other magazines publishers is that as ad budgets are moving online from print, they lose $1 in print ad revenue with each 10 cents gain in online ad revenue.
And I am not sure they they executed online particularly well. For example, style.com is their main online fashion site. All their fashion magazines like Vogue promote style.com. Style.com has 700K Compete. A website like purseblog.com has 300K Compete, and that site is run by just a few people. I think Internet has been very disruptive to CondeNast.
Um, kinda sorta, except for the inconvenient fact that yesterday Conde Nast just announced that they were dropping the use of style.com and going back to using their magazine brands as their web brands as well. See http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=138037.
Men.style.com is being rebranded as GQ because, as Adage puts it, “lifestyle content from GQ was already the main traffic driver for Men.Style.com.” Furthermore, it’s unclear if they’re even going to use style.com at all in the future.
Most of the portfolio mentioned (details.com, vogue.com, epicurious.com) are their pre-existing brands anyway, not really generics.
It looks to me as if the company that “gets” the value of generic domain names is abandoning them in favor of their branded names.
– Antony
Anthony,
CondeNast using/not using style.com does not prove anything. The problem with CondeNast is their cost structure. CondeNasts costs assume charging $100,000 per print page and selling out their ad inventory. Their websites just support selling print ads.
I think it would make much more sense to try making style.com into something like Zappos anyway. One blogger/aggregator can build $100K Compete fashion information site from nothing. Style.com probably has 100 dedicated employees, and 3-4 of those no doubt have dedicated black luxury sedans with dedicated drivers parked downstairs at all times.
Anthony
Read that story today, actually was my inspiration for writing this post, I forgot how many great domains this company owns.
Actually I think move men.style.com to GQ.com is a good move.
There are few other brands know for men’s fashions more famous than GQ.
The fact that they are holding on to these domains, even when they redirect them to other brands, rather than selling them (see the jets.com story) is further indication that this company “gets it”
Was this a post on domain names or one guys opportunity to pimp his media options site and anothers take on Conde Nast which I am sure most here could care less. Wow what a waste of 5 minut
I didn’t realize one company owned all those properties (and domains). The best are GQ.com, Style.com, Details.com, Gourmet.com, Brides.com, Wired.com, Portfolio.com, Flip.com, NewYorker.com and Vogue.com. They have nice generic domains that exactly match their magazine names. If they are losing money online it’s because they haven’t figured out how to do it right yet. But just having these names and driving people to their websites puts they way ahead of most others.
@ GFY – and I spent a few seconds reading your post, which offered me nothing. You have perfected the method of posting a comment that attacks other comments and becoming the “best” example of what you were attacking.
A nothing post.