Barry Diller, IAC and Online Content

Barry Diller is going after professional online content.

From ClickZ:

"Pragmatic Web mogul Barry Diller said IAC/InterActiveCorp will invest several hundred million dollars in original content ventures over the next two years.

Diller noted nearly all of IAC's products, from Citysearch to Match.com, have user content components. But he said professional programming, produced by those who "have the ability to make people laugh" is the future of content, online or off. He added truly amateur content gets a little old "after you've seen a cat have bad relations with a giraffe...100,000 times."

"It will not be a long tail," he went on. "It will be the very short tail, creating very large audiences on occasion, where people make things that resonate with people." He argued the commonly referenced trend of audience fragmentation is not actually happening in a big way-- not yet anyway. "Sites that have traction gain audience....You will see fragmentation inevitably at some point."

Barry Diller: Now is the Time for Online Content

Right this second!

Yahoo News:

"IAC/InterActiveCorp Chief Executive Barry Diller, who is best known for organizing a fourth network at Fox that challenged dominant players ABC, CBS, and NBC, said Tuesday that IAC will announce several new content initiatives within the next two to three months.

Now is an ideal time to pursue such plans given the rise in use of video online, Diller said.

"If I ever could think about when there is a better time to start the program business of the Internet, it is literally this second," he said at the Citigroup Global Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference in Las Vegas."