With the losses mounting, both are busy remaking their pages, yet again, to add more space for advertising and commerce. It's all part of the intense mating dance going on all across the Web between online content and commerce. The sad fact is that many serious content sites are drawing less traffic than corporate sites that amount to little more than marketing brochures. No one is quite sure why. One much- stated theory is that as a medium the Web is inherently unfriendly to long articles.
People skip from thing to thing on the Web, sampling as they go.
Whatever the reason for their troubles, Forrester Research is predicting that many of these kinds of sites aren't going to survive as stand-alones. The firm is predicting a continuing wave of mergers in which big Web players such as Yahoo and Amazon will buy smaller content sites to create hybrid networks blending original editorial content with direct sales. After all, its game plan for expanding its still-tiny audience is to publish even more original content many times a day and the 20 to 30 articles that Salon's 74 employees currently post every day don't exactly cost chicken feed to produce. Microsoft doesn't deny that Slate is losing big money. After scrapping subscription fees in February, Slate underwent a site redesign this month that, like Salon's recent make-over, is aimed at making more room for advertising, sponsorships and direct shopping links.