News.com writes about the emergence of Barry Diller as the “Net’s new poster boy” following his recent acquisition of LendingTree.
While many other CEOs have been complaining about the burst of the bubble, Diller, chief executive of USA Interactive, has been methodically picking up the pieces from the rubble.
He now controls Hotels.com, Match.com, and Expedia–which are all in the middle of the hottest growing areas of the Net.
Quote from an interview in the WSJ with Diller: “Firstly, we like fragmented businesses, and financial services is the essence of fragmentation. Second is businesses that are essentially offline moving online, that have characteristics that are advantaged in being in an online versus offline universe. Things like personals, dating, travel, information about cities, etc. Finally, we like businesses where the scale and leverage effect is easy to discern, where you can see that once you have sufficient level of activity, the scale affects are mighty. Those are the only lessons we intend to give anyone else.”
