• GigaOM, Friday, April 13, 2007 11:02 AM

The media delivery giant Comcast Corp. continues to buy its way into the content business--some might say curiously. Does this mean America's No. 1 broadband provider sees its future in media? On Thursday, Comcast acquired the online ticketing company Fangango to become part of a new Comcast site called Fancast, yet another Web TV/entertainment hub that allows people to customize their video experience.

How crowded is this space? It seems like every company out there with even the slightest relationship to media believes it can build the Web's de facto destination for online video content. But Comcast may have a stronger position than some. The company claims a whopping 2.5 billion page views per month from 15 million uniques. ComScore ranked the cable giant ninth in the page views category in February 2007, ahead of rival Viacom.

Comcast's Web efforts pale in comparison to the likes of Google and MySpace, but the company certainly knows how to leverage its television/cable assets together to build a formidable Web presence. If the numbers are anything to go by, this is something Comcast has clearly done already, and will continue to grow through acquisitions like Fandango. As an ISP, Comcast already has a built-in user base whose default home page is the Comcast.net portal. This, if leveraged properly, can be a very powerful thing.

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