I’m not sure if Jesus had a computer, high-speed Internet access and time on his hands to kill, so let me ask you this instead. In fact, Jeremy Liew today talks about vertical sites, behavior targeting and synthetic channels so I might as well ask what would Jeremy do…
Anyway, we’re really close to relaunching our flagship WatchMojo.com web video site, and I’m flirting with one of two strategies.
1 - Status Quo
Mojo Supreme’s motif is the “context is king” mantra. When we launched, Mojo Supreme consisted of a vertical search engine (still does) MetaMojo.com. It offered best-of-breed results across a number of categories, such as film, music, video games, health, travel etc. Each category was then reinforced with a media property, usually a blog. All blogs are listed here.
So the music search engine would be showcased on SoundMojo.com, for example. While today SoundMojo.com would redirect to WatchMojo.com/Music/Blog, initially it housed the blog as a separate domain. We made the change four months after launching to simply the management of the sites.
To this day, the blogs each have a shortcut URL but get redirected under the WatchMojo.com umbrella.
While we maintained this strategy with the blogs (hence why HipMojo.com redirects you to WatchMojo.com/Web/Blog), all of the videos we produced were published under the WatchMojo.com “brand”. It was, after all, watch Mojo.
2 - Micro-Publishing
But as maintained our strategy and a) aggregated, b) indexed and c) produced content, we developed fairly deep verticals.
In case you are wondering, we produce video, aggregate top 10s and contests, index text content via our search engine and videos from around the Web. It was pretty maniacal when we set out to do it, but it really strengthens our base.
So, here’s my dilemma:
As we get close to relaunching, I wonder, maybe we should have the SoundMojo.com shortcut URL take you to the vertical category’s main page; the page that aggregates video, blog entries, Top 10 lists, contests and showcases the search engine.
In other words, split up WatchMojo.com into vertical microsites. With 4,000 videos, 10,000 blog entries, 7,500 contests, etc., does it still make sense to have one portal. Or should we break up into verticals? Technically it’s all the same and this is a question of semantics, or domain forwarding, but it does make a difference.
In other words, when you type any of the shortcut URLs, should you go to
a) the blog page or
b) the vertical home that leads with a video but also has blog entries, Top 10 lists, contests etc.?
Any thoughts? Can you tell I can’t wait to relaunch…
Subscribe:
July 27th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Jesus didn’t walk on water, pull the fish and bread trick, die on the cross, and resurrect all at the same time.
July 27th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Hmm… what are you implying my good man?