SearchEngineUpdate with Vanessa Zamora - 03-31-2008 Part I
Abstract: 1. Barry Diller Wins Court Decision To Execute Plans For IAC, 2. Yahoo Launches Women’s Site “Shine”
Vanessa Zamora
Video Content Producer, SearchEngineWorld
3:50 pm on Mar. 31, 2008 (utc 0)
Transcript
Monday March 31, 2008
Barry Diller Wins Court Decision To Execute Plans For IAC
On Friday a court ruled in favor of IAC/Interactive CEO Barry Diller and his decision to split the e-commerce conglomerate and Ask.com parent into 5 separate companies. The decision came after a five day trial, during which the chairman of Liberty Media and majority voting stockholder in IAC John Malone attempted to block the deal and oust Diller. The split was originally proposed at an IAC board meeting in January. Malone objected to Diller’s plan, and filed a lawsuit the following week. Under an agreement between Diller and Malone, Diller was granted an irrevocable proxy giving him control over Liberty’s voting stake. The court judged that the split did not require Malone’s consent in the decision and, quote: “that Liberty has failed to demonstrate that Diller has breached or threatened to breach any contractual duty he owes to Liberty.” With the court decision, Diller can now go ahead with his plan to break IAC into five companies: the HSN home shopping network; Ticketmaster; Interval, a vacation time-share company; LendingTree, a mortgage broker, as well as IAC, which would include Match.com and Ask.com.
Yahoo has launched a new Web site aimed at women between the ages of 25 and 54, called Shine, which it hopes will provide additional opportunities for selling advertising to the key demographic. Yahoo currently serves as many as 40 million women visitors to its site each month, but hopes a more narrow focus on topics important to women will increase that number. Yahoo’s Shine will cover content in nine specific categories including Fashion & Beauty, Food, Healthy Living, Work & Money, Love & Relationships, Parenting, Home, Entertainment & Culture, and Astrology. The content will come from both other Yahoo properties and original material, as well as from syndication deals with the likes of Hearst, Time and others. Yahoo’s Shine will be competing against the likes of iVillage and the ad network served by Glam Media in its first site aimed at a single demographic.
