There is something I can’t figure out about the strategy at ZDNet/CNet. This morning I read a story on ZDNet about the latest Comdex gizmos and this afternoon I catch the same article on CNet. They are exactly the same except for the differences in each site’s layout.
What’s the point of this debacle? Seems silly to me that after all this time ZDNet and CNet feel that they have to maintain copies of the same articles on both sites. I know there was something of a merger announced some time back …Why not choose one site and brand to use for news and leave the other for other things. Instead they maintain both and create confusion across the readership. I guess the brand management was unable to be convincing enough.
In many cases when companies merge into newer forms they maintain a transition period so that customer (readers in this case) are not confused by a sudden flip of the switch. It would not hurt to send an email communicating the changes, and hopefully the advantages found through change as well. Nothing like this has happened at all. Seems like no one is thinking out there.