Time Warner to close Pathfinder
By Matthew Broersma
04/26/99 02:13:00 PM
It was one of the first mega Web sites. Now, says Time, Pathfinder is outmoded.
Pathfinder, the monolithic Web site for Time Warner's extensive collection of magazines, is being broken up and mined for raw materials.
Time Inc. New Media Monday acknowledged it is folding the Pathfinder operation, a pioneering attempt to establish a separate, online brand for the media giant, in favor of promoting and extending its individual magazine brands.
Time New Media is downplaying the move, which it calls an outgrowth of its online direction of the past year or so.
"This exactly matches the strategy we have been pursuing for 18 months now," said a Time New Media representative, who did not wish to be named. "We haven't spent a cent advertising the Pathfinder brand for 18 months, or tried to bring people to the Pathfinder site. It's all been promoting the individual sites."
What's more, Time says almost all -- 98 percent -- of its online traffic already flows through such URLs as people.com or time.com.
Gateway site no longer needed
Pathfinder was built in 1994 with the idea of putting all the content of Time Warner Inc., Time's parent company, in one convenient place. The idea was that users were still figuring the Web out, and would have an easier time of it if they only had one Internet address to remember.
But Time says that that's no longer a problem.
"We didn't realize how powerful our brands themselves were," the representative said. "Now it seems each brand is like a flag. Whether or not you read Time Magazine, you know that you can go to Time.com to get up-to-date headlines."
The transition, which will take place over the next six to nine months, will mainly involve the technical challenge of removing the cgi scripts that now drive each separate URL -- such as entertainmentweekly.com -- to a place in the pathfinder.com hierarchy.
Pathfinder has been rethinking its Web strategy almost since its inception. Most recently Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin hinted that the company will establish one or more interest-oriented hub sites, or "vertical portals."
These would offer content from related Time Warner properties along with e-commerce; unlike Pathfinder, they would be focused on specific consumer interests.
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...such as CDNow perhaps??
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