MySimon.Com
By Amit Phull
Corporate Background
• Founded in April, 1998, by Michael Yang
and Yeogirl Yun [1].
• Virtual Learning Agent (VLA) technology
was created by Yeogirl [1].
• Acquired by CNET Networks in 2000 for
$736 million [8].
Simply Put…
• mySimon.com is a comparison shopping
service that allows users to search the
internet for the best prices of a wide-array of
products.
• Users can browse specifically, or by category
and are able to sort their search results
according to several different pertinent
characteristics of the product (i.e. popularity,
price, etc…).
Business Objectives
• Exclusive, innovative, automatic
information discovery system is ideal for
an e-commerce Web shopping service.
• Empowers consumers to find the best
values for virtually any product on the
Web.
• Presents price information in a format
that is easy to read and sort.
Company Sophistication
• Announced partnership with
Britannica.com in 2000, linking Britannica
sites to related mySimon pages [2].
• Partnered with USAToday.com to be the
site’s exclusive provider of comparison
shopping services [5].
• Struck a deal with About.com to
incorporate mySimon’s shopping engine
into About’s network of 460 sites [3].
Innovative Technology
• Uses intelligent agent and advanced
parallel search technologies to
automatically comb Web merchants' sites
for product and price information [1].
• Creates mass quantities of intelligent
agents that mimic human behavior and
can be "trained" to extract specific
information from any merchant Web site
[1].
Simplicity
• mySimon’s user
interface is very
simple.
• Hundreds of
categories can be
easily searched.
• Results are nicely
tabulated and
sorted as the user
demands.
Awards and Honors
• mySimon.com is a winner of the “Forbes
favorite” award [11].
• Won the EPpy award for “Best Internet
Shopping Service” [11].
• Has been rated as one of Time’s Top 50
websites. Winner of the best comparison
shopping site [7].
Competition
• mySimon does face competition from
services such as those offered by Yahoo!
and the new Froogle (by Google) [4].
• Still, rated the number one comparison
shopping portal on the internet and
continues to grow.
How Money is Made
• Bulk of their revenue comes from
generating buyers for their e-retailer
clients [6].
• MySimon makes anywhere from a few
cents to almost a dollar on each
consumer that clicks through a link on its
site to one of its merchant partners [6].
• Also makes revenue through deals with
merchants to provide advertising, etc.
Customers?? Inventory??
• Because comparative shopping sites such
as mySimon.com make the bulk of their
revenue by generating buyers for their eretailer clients, customers, in a sense are
their inventory [6].
• A lot is invested into managing user
behavior and traffic.
Parent Company Profile
• CNET Networks, Inc. is a global media
company. It manages a vast internet
network, has print publications, and
manages a huge technology product
database.
• You may have heard of CNET Reviews.
Business Plan
• CNET’s (thus mySimon’s) business plan is
sound in that they deal primarily in the
business of information.
• There are no great overhead costs
associated with administering their
business.
• Extensive staffs are not really necessary.
BUT…
• Despite a solid business plan, CNET
(including mySimon) was hit hard by the
bursting of the e-commerce bubble.
• The company has not been profitable for
the last few years [10].
• Recently, they significantly readjusted
their workforce through laying off
employees [9].
How Then in the Sweet Spot?
• Although not
recently profitable,
CNET has been
significantly rising
as of late, and
promises to be one
of the companies
at the head of the
tech rebound.
How Then in the Sweet Spot?
• In releasing their latest quarterly
reports and guidance, CNET executives
have shown gradually curbing losses,
and forecast profit as early as next year
[12].
• CNET has been upgraded to outperform
by many traders, including Solomon
Smith Barney [12].
The Future
• New categories are being offered such
as the newest music category [11].
• New services such as Gift Finder and
Shopping Guides continue to be added
to enhance the robustness of the
service [11].
Random News
• mySimon co-founder Yeogirl Yun has
made the news again recently by
heading up the development of the
newest search engine WiseNut. This
search engine was highlighted by Time
magazine, and is expected to compete
with Google [7].
References
1.
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
http://eurozdnetde.mysimon.com/corporate/index.jhtml?pgid=backgrounder
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/448741
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/915511
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-977042.html
http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/382701
http://www.internetwk.com/ebizapps/ebiz072400-3.htm
http://www.time.com/time/2002/tech/best/search.html
http://www.sdtimes.com/cols/webwatch_024.htm
http://www.cnet.com/aboutcnet/0-13613-7-20096942.html
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&prev=/search%3Fq%3DCNET%2Bstock%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8&q=stocks:CNET+
http://www.mysimon.com/
http://www.multexinvestor.com/