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.
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)