Thorno, mate, come drown your sorrows

Evan Thornley, now there's a bloke we would welcome at Melbourne Long-Tail Camp. He must be feeling a bit sorry for himself after getting knocked from pillar to post by the blogosphere about his new vertical strategy for Looksmart. The critique getting the most buzz is by the mutual funds expert at About.com, entitled Looksmart Fund Site A Failure. Um, isn't About.com a competitor of these verticals? The most cutting analysis is probably the one by Peter Adams, ex Looksmart CTO.

This strategy seems like it’s more product development for Wall Street and not actual consumers - as the user experience of these template sites leaves something to be desired.

I wonder if they thought it was going to somehow increase their rankings in search engines by cross-linking all the sites like they do. Sinse all the sites appear to come from the same IP address they might actually get penalized by Google because they look a lot like a link farm.

Ouch, Evan. Evo. Ev. Apparently you're still burning cash, although the CFA has it down to a small brush fire at this late stage. We think you're all right, even if you did go to Melbourne Uni. If you've got one of those ex-Boeing private jets that all search engine CEOs seem to have idling on runways these days, pop over to Tulla and drop in for some chit-chat this Friday. Bring the missus.