BusinessWeek’s Steve Baker attended the Folio Publishing Summit in Chicago earlier this week and heard Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller speak about its future growth plans.
Baker wrote that the web site is pushing forward with an aggressive growth strategy that includes:
- Within the next 18-24 months, Forbes.com plans to launch local-language editions in German, Russian and Chinese. They will have some local content, and a number of translated stories. But they hope that many of the readers, as they drill down, will access Forbes’ English-language offerings. The idea is that for many people in the world, English is a less comfortable but viable option. The first test of this strategy is Forbes.com’s Polish site.
- Forbes.com is also planning local editions of the site, perhaps for cities such as New York, Chicago, and L.A.
- Forbes.com “woke three years ago up to the fact” that they were the leading business site in Europe, despite very little investment in European content. Today, Spamfeller says, Forbes.com is three times bigger than the FT.com in Europe, and even larger in the UK.
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