Richard Rosenblatt and his Demand Media

The December issue of Business 2.0 runs a story on Richard Rosenblatt and his company Demand Media. Rosenblatt helped broker the $580 million sale of MySpace (online version not available yet).

From the story,

"...  He (Rosenblatt) informed me that his company, Demand Media--an ambitious attempt to build a user-generated content powerhouse on top of a pile of generic Web domain names--intends to go public in late 2007 and attain a $2 billion market cap by mid-2008. And Rosenblatt isn't alone in seeing these goals as achievable: Venture capitalists have already pumped a jaw-dropping $220 million into Demand."

"... he moved rapidly to turn this theory into practice, with Demand making nine acquisitions in the space of just six months. With two takeovers--of eNom and Bulk Register--the company became the world's second-largest domain registrar after Go Daddy...."

Rosenblatt has been pushing user-generated content for a decade. In 2004, he was recruited to lead the turnaround of Intermix Media and MySpace. He successfully turned the company from the red to the black and sold it to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for $580 million.

This time, with Demand Media, he is not going to just sell it for some hundred million. He is eying $2B, and maybe much more?

My quick suggestions to Media Demand:

1. Do a super-bowl commercial next year

2. Find a way to link search engines (google, live, yahoo) to generic domain sites - not by popping up an annoying window

3. Improve the site creation tools to allow the Average Joes to quickly bring up a sexy site (and make money from it). Be aware of Microsoft's latest OfficeLive endeavor.

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• Anonymous
  May 29, 2009
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