Hollywood Media's Hollywood.com Relaunches with Podcasts, Blogs and Google Ads (HOLL, GOOG)

Hollywood Media (ticker: HOLL) announced that it has redesigned Hollywood.com, a movie and entertainment web site which competes with Amazon's IMDB. In the press release announcing the relaunch, Hollywood Media stated that the site "has seen a significant increase in the number of monthly unique users visiting the site compared to last year". But HOLL's stock has been beaten down by the company's failure to translate revenue and traffic growth into profitability. Meanwhile, the redesign, guided by usability firm Nielsen-Norman, includes podcasts and blogs. Here are the relevant excerpts from the company's press release describing the new features:

Hollywood.com Podcasts

The new Hollywood.com also publishes audio podcasts of its original content, including celebrity interviews and columns. Through the audio podcasts, consumers can subscribe to feeds using "podcatching" software which periodically checks for and downloads new content automatically. Some podcatching software is also able to synchronize podcasts to portable music players. The same technique can deliver Hollywood.com's numerous video files. Hollywood.com is currently offering podcasts of "Interviews with the Stars," "Movie Reviews" and "Hollywood Unedited," containing uncut and exclusive celebrity interviews.

Hollywood.com User Blogs and Moblogging

Hollywood.com will also offer registered users the opportunity to create and maintain a blog via a personalized My.Hollywood.com platform. Blogs may be customized by users to include photos, colors, hotlinks to entertainment references and more. These blogs may be converted into XML feeds for easy and real-time syndication Internet-wide. Moblogging, the ability to post to a blog from an email or SMS-enabled device, is also supported.

Quick comment: Note the widespread use of Google's AdSense ads on the new site. In the past, HOLL has commented on its failure to sell all its advertising inventory on Hollywood.com. Using Google automated ads is an immediate solution that should raise the profitability of the site. Perhaps this also indicates an incrementally positive trend for Google.

Question: Any opinions on the new site? How does it compare to IMDB?

Related:

• All Internet Stock Blog articles on Hollywood Media.

Full disclosure: long HOLL at the time of writing. « Any opinions expressed on the Seeking Alpha sites are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the opinion of SeekingAlpha or its management. »

Comments

[David Jackson]

Initial reactions (I'm using Safari):
(1) IMDB uses the full width of my screen, whereas Hollywood.com uses only a fairly narrow center column;
(2) IMDB has larger type size than Hollywood.com (this may be different for other browsers), so it's easier to read.
(3) I really like the movie calendar on Hollywood.com (shows you when new movies are opening). I couldn't find that feature on IMDB.
(4) I really like the Podcast feature. You click on the POD button next to a podcast title, and it opens iTunes for you with the podcast ready to subscribe to.

2005 Oct 19 02:50 PM

[David Jackson]

On the podcasts: you can't actually subscribe to podcasts of individual channels, such as just movie reviews. The POD button took me to a single subscription on iTunes that subscribed me to all the podcasts (including, eg. celebrity interviews) in one shot. That stinks.

2005 Oct 19 02:57 PM

[Dion Almaer]

I know iTunes is the big player, but I really don't like how the "POD" button assumes iTunes. What if I want to subscribe in Odeo? Or if I just want the RSS feed to put into iPodder? or.....

This also reminds me that iTunes bugs me in other ways. This link should at least go to a web page that shows me my feeds, instead of forcing iTunes to open up etc. This is iTunes fault, not the site. The hybrid iTunes is great in many ways, but sometimes i just want to view the web page in my browser, not in a browser with an iTunes wrapper!

I could also vent about other iTunes things I don't like, such as navigation from podcast to podcast and it losing your context. There is a lot of work to be done there. Apple keeps up'ing the version (iTunes 5, iTunes 6) but give me a break, its just a little hack here and there :)

2005 Oct 19 04:03 PM

[Jim Livingston]

Certainly a useful site, but I didn't find it earth-shaking. I would still go to imdb.

I haven't caught the podcast craze yet so there's nothing for me at hollywood.com that I don't get at imdb.

Having a good movie database is good but they don't seem to have the community imdb has.

2005 Oct 19 04:07 PM

[Jim Livingston]

And the fact that they're using Google interpreted as a positive for Google? Come on. It's more like hollywood.com said "the heck with it" and put AdSense ads on because it's easy.

2005 Oct 19 04:16 PM

[User 1]

That's true - but doesn't it show that any unsold ad inventory that can be monetized with Google ads represents upside for Google?

2005 Oct 19 06:08 PM

[User 1]

The Bear Case on Hollywood Media (HOLL) is a follow-up to this article.

2005 Oct 24 03:18 PM