Bloomberg-BusinessWeek combo makes web sense

It's looking more and more like Bloomberg LP is going to prevail in the bidding for BusinessWeek. That's partly because no one else seems to want the business weekly very much: Logical potential owners like Dow Jones (NWS) and Time Inc. (TWX) took themselves out of the running early on, and New York magazine owner Bruce Wasserstein, who had shown substantial interest, dropped out last week. Among strategic buyers, that leaves Bloomberg and Inc./Fast Company owner Joe Mansueto -- and BusinessWeek's own Jon Fine believes that the latter is out of contention as well.

Why does Bloomberg see potential where others don't? A partial answer could lie in the news and information provider's web strategy. With most of its resources focused on its terminal business, Bloomberg's website is very much an also-ran in the business-news category. Bloomberg.com attracted 2.3 million unique visitors in August, according to ComScore, making it the 13th biggest site in its category. McGraw-Hill's (MHP) Businessweek.com is somewhat larger, with 3.4 million uniques in August, good for 11th in the category.