According to AdAge:
The cable operator has bulked up its online-sales team and plans to open its Comcast.net portal to all its customers — increasing the potential audience from its 10 million high-speed-data subscribers to its 23 million video subscribers. And that’s just for starters.
According to TV network executives familiar with Comcast’s plans through content-carriage negotiations, the cable operator has Yahoo-size ambitions and sees the internet as key to raising its profile, and share of ad budgets.
…”For us to be successful online, you have to believe that people will still want to come to a single source for much of their online-video entertainment,” said Warren Schlichting, VP-new business strategies at Comcast. “That’s the basic underlying philosophy. We think there’s a role for somebody to work with many content providers.”
Sounds like a familiar strategy….
But…I’m not optimistic that Comcast understands the genetics of making an online service. Just my two cents…
People like Google. They like Yahoo. They choose those services over their competitors because they like them. People don’t like Comcast; they choose Comcast because they hate the alternatives.
This is true of most phone and cable operators. They have near monopolies in the locale’s they service. Their customer service is attrocious and their pricing is confusing and designed to fool people into buying more than they need (e.g. Comcast tried to rent us a cable box we didn’t need, hoping that we wouldn’t notice the small monthly charge). I believe this poor image will impede attempts to create successful online brands.
John,
Comcast needs to acquire a key web portal to build its strategy. Read this: Comcast Acquires Yahoo?
Sramana
I believe that Internet people (including Yahoo) don’t understand video as well as Comcast does and by the same token, Comcast does not understand Internet as well as Yahoo and Google do. However, technology advances have brought us to the stage that the two are going to converge and will be one. The convergence even on STB is bringing these two to the same platform and that is the opportunity as well as the challenge.
There is clearly a big ‘media gap’ out there, however. Video people don’t understand text (Internet is less a problem, text is the real reason) and text people don’t understand video. Who will rise to the challenge and benefit from their current situation — Yahoo, Comcast, or … – remains to be seen. Chance for budding entrepreneurs. No, I doubt that YouTube will do it. But who can say that confidently — not me.
I think you are right on. I’ve spent some time with them, and they are a bright group, but web-centric ?? Not yet!