Jun 19 2008

Topix Understands the Importance of Integration, Forges 6 partnerships

Bilal Hameed | 18 Views

Topix, a social news site will be announcing six new content partnerships, which include partnering with Eventful, Zap2It, InfoUSA, LiveDeal, Apartments.com and Informa Research Services. The partnerships will give Topix users in each of US’s 32,500 zip codes access to localized event and entertainment information, business directory data, pet classifieds, mortgage resources and apartment listings.

In the local entertainment section Topix will be integrating with Eventful’s database of more than 8 million events on its 32,500 local news pages. Topix users could from now on search for and find out local and upcoming events along with posting new events for free. Zap2It integration will enable Topix users to enjoy up-to-date local movie show times and television listings.

Topix has also partnered with InfoUSA to launch a nationwide local business directory containing more than 14 million business records. The partnership with LiveDeal will ensure that Topix’s existing pet classifieds would be replaced with that of LiveDeal. Apartments.com will provide local real estate listings on Topix more breadth and depth with Informa Research Services serving information and research analysis on mortgage rates in the locality.

Topix is the largest socially edited news paper and with these partnerships it will surely entrench its position even further. In the beginning of 2007 Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt announced that integration would be the centerpiece of their product strategy for the year 2007. Prior to this Google had the reputation of throwing half baked beta products that were poorly integrated with other Google services into the market. With the focus towards integration Google not only bested competition but also made alot of other players to throw in the towel.

Integration is exactly what Topix is doing here. They like Google know it well that 1 and 1 equals 11.

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