I think a lot of us saw that coming from a mile away.
From AdAge.com
RushmoreDrive.com, the first black search engine, recently shut down only a year after its launch. This raised the question about whether there is a market for a black version of Google.
Rushmore Drive was the brainchild of Barry Diller’s IAC, which just reported a “first-quarter net loss of $28.4 million compared to a profit of $52.8 million in the same quarter a year ago.”
Too bad. Rushmore’s failure is not only another negative statistic from the fallout of the economic downturn, but also from questionable planning. (more…)
Kevin Walker, Managing Partner for CultureLab (a marketing firm) commented on this piece.
“As I argued in my Marketing to Youth in the Age of Obama post http://www.culturelabcreative.blogspot.com, the internet has expedited a race neutral media environment. We should be more focused on lifestyle, interests, generation, pop culture tastes, consumer behavior, etc. Rushmore Drive’s failure is a visceral reminder of how targeting the ever elusive African American monolith is not that important for advertisers and for younger tech savvy African Americans themselves who are comfortable with all that the general market offers.
The smartest African Americans in media and advertising are those who are trying to come up with content and messaging that appeals to all, across cultural groups. We need to unbound ourselves from pre-internet age thinking as it relates to targeting and segmentation.”
Kevin is absolutely right.
While the article later mentions that Rushmore appeared to be quicker at “collecting, organizing and disseminating Black information”, personally that has not made a difference in how I search for information relating to Black culture.
Some folks continue to make the argument that Black websites are somehow harder to find in the main search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. They make this argument, but I have yet to see anyone (A) produce the raw data and (B) compare it to non-Black websites that are also difficult to find. What it really boils down to is the savviness of web producer. For example, Google provides a boat load of tools that web producers can use to help individuals get noticed and strategically placed in their search engine. You just have to know how to use it. The web in general also offers many, MANY free tools web producers can use to help them get noticed throughout cyberspace. So for someone to suggest that there is some evil White man behind the curtain keeping Black web producers in the back of the bus is just plain nonsense.
Secondly, I think a lot of us limit our own potential for increased traffic when we hover exclusively on the needs of the Black community. Think about it. Black folks make up about 13% of the population and here we have thousands of Black-themed websites competing for such a small segment of the general population. This is exactly why I think Kevin’s analysis is right on the money.
Monolith marketing can only take you so far on the net.
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Rushmore Drive bites the dust
by Duane on July 1st, 2009 at 4:41 amI think a lot of us saw that coming from a mile away.
From AdAge.com
Kevin Walker, Managing Partner for CultureLab (a marketing firm) commented on this piece.
Kevin is absolutely right.
While the article later mentions that Rushmore appeared to be quicker at “collecting, organizing and disseminating Black information”, personally that has not made a difference in how I search for information relating to Black culture.
Some folks continue to make the argument that Black websites are somehow harder to find in the main search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. They make this argument, but I have yet to see anyone (A) produce the raw data and (B) compare it to non-Black websites that are also difficult to find. What it really boils down to is the savviness of web producer. For example, Google provides a boat load of tools that web producers can use to help individuals get noticed and strategically placed in their search engine. You just have to know how to use it. The web in general also offers many, MANY free tools web producers can use to help them get noticed throughout cyberspace. So for someone to suggest that there is some evil White man behind the curtain keeping Black web producers in the back of the bus is just plain nonsense.
Secondly, I think a lot of us limit our own potential for increased traffic when we hover exclusively on the needs of the Black community. Think about it. Black folks make up about 13% of the population and here we have thousands of Black-themed websites competing for such a small segment of the general population. This is exactly why I think Kevin’s analysis is right on the money.
Monolith marketing can only take you so far on the net.
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