Readers know that I have been involved in the IT and Enterprise publishing arena for many years. I have seen many ideas and many companies come and go. I have witnessed ups and downs with my own properties in this space.

It is particularly interesting to see what has happened to CNET. CNET has terrific properties. But I think it took a wrong turn about 5 years ago. It went from a tech source to a company that wanted to be a combination of Yahoo, Amazon.com and Circuit City.

CNET was "the place" to go for Tech information in 2000. CNET's News.com was the go to Web site for tech news and was often times quoted in traditional financial outlets such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. CNET pulled off a coup when it shockingly was able to walk away with the URL Zdnet.com in a deal with Ziff Davis. Ziff Davis Media today has never recovered from losing the zdnet.com URL; in fact, this is one of the more shocking and goofy deals of all time in the short life of Web site transactions.

I am not privy to know what took place in the executive suite of CNET over the years, but at some point someone over there decided that being the center point for tech information and news was not glamorous enough. Fast forward to the present: CNET has lots of traffic dealing with consumer electronics, but gave up its pre-eminence in covering Tech. No doubt there is potentially more money being big in consumer electronics than in Tech, but consumer electronics is a commodity business and Tech is solid meat and potatoes.

Adding insult to injury was the news last week that Shelby Bonnie, CEO of CNET, had to resign over stock option backdating problems.

Writing posts such as this in which I offer criticisms leaves me open to greater criticism down the road if my company does not perform to expectations. I am prepared for all eventualities, but believe that our focus will see us through any potential rough spots.