It's not all subtraction at New York Times
It's not easy being a newspaper company these days. Circulation rates, staffs, and page sizes keep getting smaller. However, New York Times has aggressively grown its online turf to compensate; even if it's cutting back elsewhere, the company's investment makes sense here.
ConsumerSearch.com scours third-party sources for reviews on everything from robotic lawn mowers to air purifiers to online music-subscription services. The site makes money through Google's
Crawling sites as a content source is a popular technique. My favorite example is the RottenTomatoes.com movie rating site, now owned by News Corp.
Is this a good deal? It's too early to tell. This morning's release sheds little light on the acquired site's finances, beyond noting that it has just six employees and will begin adding to earnings by next year.
New York Times acquired About.com from magazine whiz Primedia
Buying a meta-review site like ConsumerSearch should create synergies for About.com, if the story of Marchex
It would be a shame to see "all the news that's fit to print" become an automated art form.
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Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz still enjoys reading the paper in the morning, but finds it obsolete once breakfast has been consumed. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.