http://www.msnbc.com/news/556756.asp

NEW YORK, April 9 — NBC said Monday it is shutting down its loss-ridden Internet subsidiary, acknowledging that any hopes of it becoming profitable had vaporized along with the online advertising market. Many of the 300 jobs there will be eliminated as the unit’s assets are integrated into NBC.

(Why'd they need 300 people to administer it to start with?)

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2001

Answers

(Erm ... that should be "NBCi Is Toast" in the title.)

(re: my parenthetical comment ... Phil Greenspun seems to be able to run this place with a handful of technowizards, as does Jonathan Latimer at JediKnight.)

(Sure, there's occasionally a few problems here -- but NBCi had plenty of problems, too!)

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2001

Bbbbbut...Ars Dig. has 300 employees ?? The deplorable now merged former move.com had at least that and $74 mill. in an effort to enter a "market" which might not have been there. CD lucked out and sold that for well over $600-700M. in stock but can't convert to cash for 3 years. MOST other POORLY DEFINED and Aimless dotMesses simply DIE. NBCi.com was well aimed and not badly executed except for one tiny problem: they like others never bothered to ask: WHO IS PAYING FOR THIS IN PROFITS (not budget funds or V.C. checks)?? If that question was asked from the beginning, NBC might have had second thoughts.

Remember 95% of all product intros into Retail FAIL in less than one year. Why did the Suits at NBC assume a dot Com was different? Was it Booze or powder or merely childhood dreaming?

MBCi needed that many people if you are familiar with the mundane tasks of co-ordinating between all the affiliates, local news, news services etc. Not everything can be automated and many pages must be staged while others get yanked. Liability laws are such that index anything online or taken offline must be done in a way to aid retrieval. Just maintaining the "wires" is a full time 24/7.

They probably could have saved money "outsourcing" which is now the preferred method of launching and running trial sites but if you are familiar with the mentality of NBC (or the other major players) that was probably out of the question.

NBC has been trying to find any formula to stay ahead. They were running the Sat. Night Movie with pop quizzes for instant winners ($50,000 plus many at $1,000). And there was the great ad for "Quick Click": find a word, click it, Get Information......ARE YOU WITH ME?

But it was still a very expensive method to get viewers for the affiliates and the programming. MSNBC is a winner because the "portals" were too intimidating for the "average citizen" and MSNBC looks "familiar" aided by two tools, the headline applet and the add-on for Outlook which turns Outlook Today into a personal portal for news and those parts of news people want at their fingertips in one place.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2001