With Job-Listings Site, International Data Group Unveils New Net Look

SAN FRANCISCO -- A few days after announcing to its staff a new Internet strategy, tech publishing giant International Data Group says it's ready to start taking the wraps off its new online look.

"Over the next 90 days, there will be a whole series of launches," IDG President and Chief Executive Kelly Conlin told TheStreet.com.

As the first glimpse of the new Web strategy, IDG will launch this week a job listings service for people in the information-technology industry called JobUniverse.com, which includes more than 14,000 listings from 12 Web sites around the world. JobUniverse will become part of ITWorld.com, IDG's new Web portal for the infotech crowd. ITWorld.com will also feature content from IDG properties such as ComputerWorld and JavaWorld.com and from a strategic partnership with IDG's research arm, IDC.

The portal is one prong of IDG's revamped Web strategy; the two other elements will be a computing portal anchored by PC World Online and a site focusing on the gaming market.

"Each of the business units has the opportunity to look at a public offering," Conlin said. "They're all considering that." The chief criterion for an IDG IPO is that it "must create incremental value for IDG shareholders," he said. In other words, the IPO valuation must be greater than IDG's own valuation of a business unit.

IDG's plans to spin off its Internet operations in an IPO started gaining steam this spring. In May, Conlin told the San Francisco Chronicle that IDG was considering rolling its 240-plus Web sites into a single company code-named Web IDG Networks, and that shares of the company might be sold in an IPO. Last week, the company announced to employees a new strategy centered on the new three portals. On Monday, Conlin downplayed the company's early commitment to that all-in-one strategy.

"We had never concluded that having one single portal would serve readers best, though we certainly wanted to test that idea," Conlin said. "To expect IDG to have one singular URL on the Net is not consistent with the size of the company or the number of market segments we serve."

Bill Reinstein, the 35-year-old CEO of ITWorld.com, says the portal has "great potential for an IPO" but declined to give further details. He said the site will continue to unveil new initiatives this year and that it will beef up its staff to as many as 100 by year-end from the current 50.

IDG has been facing a lot of pressure to boost its Internet presence, as well as the number of visitors to its sites. In the July MediaMetrix ratings of unique users, CNet (CNET Quote) was ranked No. 18, and Ziff-Davis' (ZD Quote) ZDNet was next at No. 19. By contrast, IDG's network came in at No. 48.

Some analysts question whether IDG's new strategy will make the media conglomerate more effective against those competitors. "They've always been a background competitor," says Friedman Billings, Ramsey analyst Rob Martin. "They're going back to what CNet did two years ago, creating a lot of specialized sites. CNet has proven that they should go the other way, upstream."

After cultivating a number of individual brands early on that were geared toward technology experts, Martin says CNet is now trying to brand itself as a technology Web site that appeals to the broadest possible range of consumers. FBR has no underwriting relationship with CNet.

Andrea Williams, an analyst with online investment bank E*OFFERING, says IDG's status as a privately held company should give it more freedom to invest the kind of resources needed to build a brand on the Internet. But like old media companies, IDG is having trouble transitioning to the new media universe.

"The challenge for these traditional companies is to think of their product quite differently from their core business," says Williams, who thinks that to succeed, old media firms like IDG must overcome their fears of cannibalizing their already existing businesses. "Are they willing to eat their own children?"