AOL, MSN, Google, Yahoo “are beginning to act, look and feel like networks in everything they do.” As USA Today’s Jefferson Graham writes, they want be programmers (and not the C++ kind) for users who are connected all the time. Among the clues: Yahoo’s hiring of broadcast programmer Lloyd Braun to head and staff up its media group; the 15 web shows AOL has in production; advertising is increasingly video driven.
But it’s not about recreating today’s broadcast nets. Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s chief product officer, describes his company’s efforts as a “connect the dots” kind of network: “We’re about connecting the dots. Taking services on one part of our network and creating a new value for it by tying it together with another. That creates a better user experience, and more fully engages them.”
Charlene Li, analyst, Forrester: “Who’s to say we won’t have a Yahoo channel on the TV, and an NBC network online? Whether it originates on TV or the Internet won’t matter.”