The Industry Standard will be resurrected as a blog-cum-community site in December, IDG president Bob Carrigan revealed at our Future Of Business Media conference.Carrigan said an IDG group at InfoWorld in San Francisco has developed a “very innovative social media platform” that aggregates input from the community in a prediction market thing“.
Though built as an “experiment”, the team wanted to apply it to the Standard because of historical brand strength. The new site will include “bloggers, some editorial content and substantial input from the community on different things”. “We’re going to have fun with it – it’s an experiment. Let’s just go with it and have fun with it – life’s too short.”
Carrigan: “The internet economy is more important than ever. We’ve been experimenting and trying things out and then we found a very willing sponsor that offered to buy out all the inventory for a substantial period of time. We’re trying to hire an editor – we do have a concept around this brand.” The site will have “built-in advertising and promotion”. Carrigan conceded the biggest fear was that the move would be “representative of a bubble” – so he promised “no rooftop parties”.