Snap, Xoom, Gone! - Company Operations

Industry Standard, The, Oct 16, 2000 by Jenny Oh

How NBCi merged all its online properties into one Web site.

NBCi.com just launched a new version of its Web site, integrating brand-name portals Xoom.com and Snap.com. Registered members of Xoom and Snap are now redirected to NBCi.com, where the San Francisco-based company will try to leverage original news and network content. We spoke with Leo Chang, chief technology officer at NBCi, about the challenges of consolidating several Internet properties into one.

What's the overall mission of the relaunched NBCi.com?

Leo Chang: We've brought together disparate brands like Xoom and Snap into one Web site. For instance, there used to be a search engine and shopping portal on Snap, which you can now find under different tabs at NBCi.com. Also, Web surfers who went to NBC.com to look for content related to the TV network are now redirected to the entertainment section of NBCi. Prior to the relaunch, most of the traffic to NBCi came from our portal Snap.com.

What was difficult about relaunching NBCi.com?

LC: The biggest challenge was the backend stuff: first, creating a unified registration system. We acquired a database of users registered through Snap as well as Xoom. The technical challenge was consolidating the registration applications from both Snap and Xoom and channeling them into the same database. Also, we had to rewrite the membership interface so that the personalized Web sites continue to serve up the right content. The bottom line is that there are a lot of moving parts to integrate.

So on the front end, these properties appear consolidated. Is the content sitting in different Web servers?

LC: Certain components of the Web site are served up on different platforms. Some applications simply don't lend themselves to sharing the same platform. For instance, if you're going to develop a chat or community application, a publishing platform may not be the right place to write it.

To what extent, then, do you use out-of-the-box applications instead of customizing your own?

LC: We use customized applications. For example, the publishing platform we use is our own. And that lets Web producers quickly and easily add content to the site. As for out-of-the-box application servers, we don't use them very much, but we have them in a few places where it works and we can deploy quickly. The downside of using different platforms is more of an operations issue; it means you need staff who have expertise in all these platforms. On the other hand, you're picking the right tool for the right job.

Now that you've consolidated several Internet properties, each with its own user base, do you have any concerns about having enough bandwidth?

LC: We did have big concerns about performance and bandwidth. We did some pretty serious performance analysis in-house. We can't exactly predict how much more traffic we're going to have, but we take an estimate and basically double it to give us some headroom. We certainly don't expect to run out of capacity.