AlleyCorp’s Kevin Ryan Speaks!
by Kara Swisher
Posted on July 16, 2008 at 2:11 PM PT
With the sale of paidContent to the Guardian Media Group and the talks TechCrunch has been in with AOL, there certainly is a lot of hubbub around tech blogging sites of late.
One of the more interesting sites that has gone up over the last year is Silicon Alley Insider, which is headlined by former Internet analyst Henry Blodget (yes, that Henry Blodget).
But featuring Blodget’s speedy analysis of big trends, and news about Web and media players, with a sprinkling of reporting from its small team of writers, it’s been a sharp entrant into the sector.
Perhaps most compelling is that the site is backed by Web 1.0 entrepreneur Kevin Ryan, former CEO of DoubleClick (GOOG), who has nested SAI inside a network of new Web efforts at AlleyCorp.
Ryan founded what is essentially a Web 2.0 version of an incubator with former DoubleClick CTO Dwight Merriman.
While one can debate DoubleClick’s ads-in-your-digital-face strategy over its growth (it is now a division of Google), there is no question Ryan’s aggressive early efforts set the stage for the commercialization of the Web that continues today.
Now Ryan is trying to do the same for Web content on SAI. It just got a new small slug of funding; Blodget is also adding two new business sites to the mix.
What AlleyCorp all means is a bit eclectic. Ryan’s network of affiliated sites includes the content delivery network Panther Express, the 10gen apps development platform, a shopping engine called ShopWiki, the Music Nation independent music community and an online invitation-only, high-fashion sample sale site called Gilt Groupe.
Although SAI has a high profile, Gilt is perhaps the most intriguing of AlleyCorp’s sites since it is essentially an American copy of a highly successful European version.
Using the Web’s speed and the allure of an exclusive, limited sale of designer clothes, along with an Amazon-like shipping system, is perhaps the perfect mix of offline and online. It also has to potential to move into other e-commerce categories.
Here’s my video interview with Ryan about all this and more:
Comments
I wish they would expand on their shopwiki platform. As an ecommerce executive, I can personally attest to the need for “free” CSEs or Comparison Shopping Engines that compete with Google Base! The paid CSE model, where merchants are charged a “cpc or ppc” or fee-per-click will decline in value as the U.S. economy slows even more. Additionally, no paid search model,(either shopping or ads), can ensure protection from click fraud, unless you spend countless hours analyzing the data or you are a fish and the CSE will do it for you!
However, we all know the vast majority of merchants providing deals to consumer’s everyday are the small fish! This is where a company like Shopwiki can really blast off . . . I can keep writing about other ways they could profit from a free CSE business model like Google Base but I have to get back-to-work crunching my analytics data for possible click fraud clues!
Posted by Dan Strickland at August 8th, 2008 at 10:49 am