In a climate where dot-com publishers are dropping like flies, two tech information rivals Thursday say they will pool their resources.
New York-based TheStreet.com and San Francisco-based MarketWatch.com
are now in a strategic alliance designed to boost each other’s subscription-based readership.
Under the terms of the two-part agreement, MarketWatch.com says it will feature selected premium headlines from RealMoney.com, TheStreet.com’s subscription-based sister site, throughout MarketWatch.com’s Web properties. For its part of the relationship, TheStreet.com will offer subscription-based products as an opt-in registration in MarketWatch.com’s “Membership Center.”
The mantra continues to be that “content is king,” but most online publishers have had a tough time keeping their doors open after the great Web advertising slump of 2001.
Back in September, one of the Internet’s premier publishing houses, The Industry Standard, shut down and sold off to AOL property Time Inc. and Boston-based International Data Group
.
Other online publishers like Red Herring and Upside.com have had to scale back their operations to survive.
To survive, most content providers are now turning to subscription-based information services. The deal between MarketWatch.com and TheStreet.com is certainly proof of that.
“Our partnership with MarketWatch.com allows us to reach a larger, previously untapped user base by offering a variety of proprietary, subscription-based products,” says TheStreet.com Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Business Development Steve Miller. “MarketWatch.com provides us with user demographics that are a perfect fit for TheStreet.com to potentially increase subscriptions to its premium services.”