Heads-up, Sidewalk, CitySearch, Yahoo, et al: the local 500-pound gorilla just hit the streets - or wires - of New York. Announcing that no one knows New York like it knows New York, and despite a super-saturated market, The New York Times today announced its intention to launch its own online city listings site, New York Today.
"It's not just going to be a 'what to do, where to go,' which is pretty much what the other city guides are about," boasts Dan Donaghy, general manager of New York Today. "This is our home turf, we have very important franchises in New York, and we plan to be nothing less than Number One."
That means that The New York Times will be leveraging its weight to entice local businesses to buy Web sites in its directory, pull in advertisers, and build classifieds, shopping, and real estate listings that Donaghy anticipates will outsize any of their competitors.
Besides simple Sidewalk-style arts and entertainment listings (many culled from the newspaper's famous reviews), the site will also contain news nuggets such as sports scores, traffic conditions and headlines, and "how-to" city survival guides on topics such as buying a house or renting a car. The site is being created using Zip2 technology that's heavy on "applications," and will be launched in early 1998.
But while The Times, insists that of course its will be bigger, better, and different from all of its competitors, it has the disadvantage of being late to market. Sidewalk has been up for almost six months, CitySearch for more than two years, and sites like Yahoo and Total New York have been pulling in users even longer, and many crucial local businesses have already established relationships with one of these guides.
Those competitors, in turn, say that the entrance of the behemoth isn't keeping them awake at night either - despite the fact that The Times already has the advantage of a ready-made mailing list of more than 2 million current online subscribers, who should expect friendly messages in their inboxes soon.
"While we respect The New York Times because they're a 100 year-old tradition, we've found that a credible competitor helps to build awareness of the category, so that it helps more than it hurts," said Thomas Layton, president of CitySearch. "If there's any place in the universe where there's enough for everyone, it's New York."
