The Industry Standard Is Back as an Online Content Offering Plus Prediction Market

Update: Looks like the site is down as of 4:31AM - reports on VentureBeat show it down pretty much since midnight.

Last week I spoke with Derek Butcher, the new Vice President and General Manager of The Industry Standard (TIS). The Industry Standard was a major print and online publication during the first boom in the late 90s. Eventually Butcher says that when online advertising dropped in volume in 2001, The Industry Standard went bankrupt and IDG purchased the assets of the company, including the domain name in 2001. IDG is a massive online content company with over 450 Web sites along with running 750 events each year. This new version of TIS has been in development for a year.

The new site (launching this morning) is built on Drupal (as is CN) and appears to have moderate customization on the theme. Butcher notes that their goal is to make The Industry Standard an essential resource again. He also spoke about how hard it is for bloggers to monetize content and for readers to find great content; two problems they are looking to solve.

They want to cover news but believe it's a commodity so the content focus is on industry views and analysis. The site is similar to Huffington Post except that they will pay their writers. Monetization will come from advertising -- it appears Intel is an initial lead sponsor.

The site also has a "prediction market" -- this allows users to place bets on the editorial content along with seeding questions about industry concerns. The current predictions that can be bet against include: Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo, Yahoo! to launch Fire Eagle, and Ad spending will shift from impression to performance-based marketing in 2008. You receive an amount of S$ (Standard Dollars) to bet as you wish. While it appears like Fred Wilson and Guy Kawasaki enjoy betting on the predictions, I find it a bit boring. So I was right that x did y, what does it get me? More S$? Give away prizes or cash, and there might be some real interest in placing bets.

Based on Alexa, it appears they still have some traffic routing to the site and with a very old domain name along with signing some top technology writers, the new Industry Standard might just move up in the rankings relatively quickly.