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Is FiLife Running On Borrowed Time?

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Less than two months after talking up the turnaround at Dow Jones-IAC (NSDQ: IACI) personal finance JV FiLife, paidContent has learned the site’s continued existence is no certainty. It survived the multiple trimmings as Barry Diller cut back on IAC’s portfolio of emerging businesses, but the company is now exploring options that range from leaving it open to a sale or a full shut down. When Ezra Kucharz, president and GM for just over a year, left for CBS (NYSE: CBS) in January, both IAC and DJ credited him publicly with turning around the site and building it to the #4 personal finance site with 4.4 million unique visitors in December. Now both companies are declining comment about the site’s future.

One possibility for IAC could be selling its stake to Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS), which recently bought out SmartMoney partner Hearst. But that’s a well-established brand with an 800,000-circ magazine. Whether DJ would even want to own FiLife outright is unclear—as is whether a deal actually would involve much money. What FiLife does have—more traffic than SmartMoney.com, where personal finance is just one category, and a digital mentality. Is there a way to combine the two?

FiLife has had a bit of a tortured life from its beginning: taking more than a year to move from an idea to a blog, then taking so long to emerge from that status the plans appeared to be dormant. Dave Kansas, brought in from the Wall Street Journal to launch the site, was replaced by online vet Kucharz in late 2008. Adam Wiener, executive editor and VP-content was promoted to GM when Kucharz left, but not given the title of president.

It’s made strides on the editorial side. Just last month FastCompany picked it as the most innovative company in the finance area for using “a Q&A format with a host of social and game-like features to get Americans talking about money. More as warranted—and please feel free to e-mail me if you have details.

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Staci D. Kramer
@sdkstl Mar 19, 2010 11:15 PM ET

Hourglass

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Posted In: Features, Exclusive, Media & Publishing, Online News, Companies, IAC, News Corp., Dow Jones

  • hulu is not you tube it,s not possible

  • There is no match hulu to youtube. youtube is best.

  • lubomir

    Fuck the hulu mulu, you tube is #1. Goog rocks. Hulu sucks.

  • Amanda Natividad

    Thanks for your note, Carter. We've changed the refresh time so there shouldn't be disruptions anymore.

  • While the hulu's interface is nice…no video site beats Youtube's fast load time.
    By the way, have you noticed that the page refreshes at paidcontent distsurb the user experience? Try watching a an embedded video and see how the page refresh dosrients the user… the video disappears and you have to scroll again to find where you were.

  • Jamie Poitra

    Fox's whining sounds a bit duplicitous in this case.

    Hulu seems to feature those shows that are getting constantly updated new material. 

    Additional old material gets a show featured more due to people continuing to enjoy a popular episode or what not. 

    Fox does two things that I don't see NBC doing that hurt them in that regard.  they don't seem to be putting as many shows up.  And those shows that they do put up often have episodes that expire from the site after a certain period.  I discovered that after missing a couple of shows for a few weeks and realized that they were gone when I tried to go watch them.

    The Sci Fi channel does the same things, and one ups it by also delaying the release of episodes online by a week more so that the content is stale by the time it shows up.  I've already watched it through other, uhm, 'methods' by that time.

    Of course the quality of the content has a lot to do with it too.  If you show isn't clicked on as much as other shows of course it is going to drop down the list when people view the popular shows page which is typically the best way to find something interesting on the site.

    Oh, and not only have I seen more of those PSA commercials lately there has been a distinct uptick in those "THIS SHOW WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY HULU'S ADVERTISERS" non commercials that pop up when no one has sponsored something.

  • Marshall Kirkpatrick

    "Foreign languages…Biology!!" lol

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