For the 40 employees still trooping in each day to work for Express Digital Media's remaining four websites, the future is bleak. Following last month's £125m takeover of the newspaper group by Richard Desmond, publisher of OK! and various adult magazines, staff have been put on 30 day's notice.
In letters delivered to them last week the closure of the sites was described as "likely", and although there are still three weeks of the "consultation period" left, some staff expect the axe to fall before then.
Ian Monk, a spokesman for Desmond, says the sites are "desperately unprofitable", heading for a loss this year of £8m. Refusing to say whether there had been approaches to buy any of the sites, he says: "There are options which have been put forward, which include redevelopment or closure as we seek ways of making them more profitable. Should the sites be closed, every attempt will be made to find staff new roles within the group."
The new owners, Northern and Shell, publisher of porn magazines including Asian Babes, has its own "major internet strategy" under new media director Matthew Bugden, says Monk, and the OK! site will be "considerably redeveloped".
"Newspapers in general are examining again what the internet can do for them. The Guardian and Associated Newspapers are very keen, but if you look at the Sun and News International, you will see they are scaling down their interest," Monk says.
Tony Cuthbertson, director of Express Digital Media, rejects the claim that high costs and advertising revenues of only around £240,000 a year meant the websites - except for lads' site MegaStar, which Lord Hollick's United News & Media has retained - were already dead ducks. "All the sites had business plans in place, and all the funding had been agreed," he says, stressing that advertising revenue would increase.
Of Express Digital Media's four sites, the Express website, SportLive, All about parents and Company-Leader, the last two have been up and running for less than four months.
Reflecting relative optimism before the takeover, SportLive was in the process of hiring a new journalist as the surprise arrival of Desmond was being played out. "They offered me the job knowing the Express was going to be sold, but they thought they were all going to stay with United," says the journalist. "They were completely shocked - they had been given budgets and were looking to expand. They were planning for the future, and aiming to do more of their own content."
Similarly, Neil Harley-Rudd, of design consultancy UK Media, had been invited to redesign the Express websites just before the takeover speculation reached its zenith late last month. "I had a message from the internet editor asking me to do it, but then, from emails I received, it seemed to get less of a sure thing and I've not heard anything since," he says.
While Cuthbertson stresses that "all the sites are still up and running, with all their features, and they are being updated as normal", one former Express employee is less positive. "There is a lot of fear and morale has gone through the floor," he says. "The root cause is that United got online very late into a crowded market and didn't invest enough.
"There is also the theory that the Express was not a big enough brand for the internet market. It had a low internet conversion of its readers. The main site has not been going two years and the two which are less than four months old have never had a chance. But the foundations of the whole operation were wrong, and always seemed muddled. The Express site began under LineOne, the internet service provider that United owned with BT, and now has up for sale."
A former employee of Express Digital Media says: "At first, the Express site was within LineOne and really just provided it with news content until this spring. Only later did it start to become a proper site in its own right, although it looks like those plans will not come to fruition.
"It was only quite late this year that SportLive and MegaStar were given any significant funding. They were a tremendous team doing a very good job, but with no resources. Allaboutparents and Company-Leader were vertical sites, modelled on Guardian Unlimited, with the idea being to put the various strengths of the paper onto the net, but they have just not had a chance. You can't justifiably shut them down on the question of profitability.
"I can't believe the Express is going to be the only newspaper without an internet site, which is now such an important part of the brand development of a paper."
Hugo Drayton, the Telegraph's new media managing director, agrees that the muddle of the framework behind the sites did not help. "They had too many disparate things going on," he says. "Other, more successful sites had better strategies. Websites are an easy target because they are usually nobody's fiefdom. They do not offer any short-term return. The owners are doing what anyone new does - looking at where they can trim and cut down duplication. That said, from what I have read and heard they were not operating as viable propositions anyway.
"But I will be very surprised if they did not reopen something in the next six months, an online and newspaper strategy which complement one another."
That Desmond is taking a cost-minimising approach to the internet is perhaps reflected in his response to a request to find a replacement for the outgoing health editor. "Why do we need a health reporter? Get it off the internet, it's free," he is reported to have said.
Within the newspaper stable, it is the Star which is more profitable than the Express, and on the internet, MegaStar emerged as the strongest Express site. Some may argue that glamour and the lower end of the market are what Desmond knows best, but Lord Hollick kept MegaStar, which has just benefited from a £3m advertising campaign. Since the start of that campaign, the number of individual users has grown by 40,000 to 330,000 and monthly page impressions now average 18.7m.
Drayton says he would not be surprised if the group's internet future was more downmarket. "Pornography and gambling are two things which often lead new technology, and did so with audio text phoneline services and then the internet as forerunners for more acceptable sites," he says. "Desmond will no doubt have learnt from the experience of the adult sites".
A recent survey claims that 36% of home internet users are more interested in porn than sports or news - something that will not be news to Richard Desmond.
