Scripps Networks Enters UGC Arena With Incando

KNOXVILLE, August 9: Scripps
Networks continues to bolster its online presence with the acquisition of
Incando Corporation, whose assets include the personal media sharing service
Pickle.com and the user-generated content management platform Powered by
Pickle.

The acquisition marks Scripps
Networks’ second new-media purchase in less than a month, following the
company’s recent acquisition of Recipezaar.com, a leading user-generated recipe
and community site featuring more than 230,000 recipes.

Based on proprietary software,
Incando's technology enables speedy uploads of photos and videos from
computers, mobile phones or digital cameras to any website. Scripps Networks
hopes to enhance the user-centric, social media and personalization
functionality of its lifestyle content by using Incando’s technology. Within
the next few years, Scripps Networks expects as much as 50 percent of its
online content to be co-created by its users.

Incando is a start-up founded
in 2005 by John Funge and Leo Scott. The two will now join the Scripps Networks
Interactive Group, headed by Deanna Brown as president, to lead the integration
of their technology across all of Scripps Networks' online properties.

"It's becoming clear that
consumers have an appetite for both the professional guidance they have come to
rely on from our branded websites as well as the insights and sensibilities
they can get from the user-generated experience,” said Brown. "User-generated
content is the perfect complement to the authoritative resources currently
provided by our brands and will allow us to broaden and deepen our relationship
with audiences through open, two-way conversations centered around content,
community and commerce opportunities in the food, home and living categories.”