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Is FiLife Running On Borrowed Time?

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

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

  • J M

    Of course it's financial necessity.  Haymarket is a company run on mid 20th century thinking and is being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century only by the tug of purse strings.  Strategy?  Unlikely.  Heseltine refused for years to even have a business plan claiming that he was far too entrepreneurial for such trifles.  This is a great shame for the staff many of whom have given years and years to this company but the owners and directors of Haymarket deserve everything they get.

  • JS

    This is a legacy of Brand Media's past (Rufus Olins) and present (mis) management. No strategy or long term thinking ever took place. They lurched from one position to another: first Brand Republic was going to be renamed and downsized, then it was king, then they decided to focus on print titles and now back to Brand Republic. Along the way there have been many casualties. And as the above comment says internal rivalries (back stabbing) was rife with morale always low. A lot of talent left. Yes the Market is tough and there's a recession but other publishers are faring better - look at the proliferation of fantastic blogs that have eclipsed publishers like haymarket, centaur and incisive. Haymarket has (mis) managed itself into this crisis.

  • MP

    Brand Media was a mad set-up—loads of internal rivalry, chasing after the same leads and having four journalists do different versions of the same on-diary story within a few minutes of each other.

    Haymarket never seemed to decide how BrandRepublic fitted in with the print mags. For a while it seemed to be the central portal - then the mags went off and launched their own separate sites again. I'm still not sure it's clear how Media Week and BR will sit alongside each other.

Covering the UK’s Digital Media Economy | paidContent:UK Newsletter

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