Vice president and general manager at CNNGo, Bikram Sohal told WIT that even though social media and mobile had changed the market for travel and lifestyle faster than anyone expected, “CNNGo is a media company, content is what we produce and is what we are good at”.

The difference is, he said, “we are executing faster and in a more focused manner” and using different channels to reach the customer.

Agreeing with the notion that good content like good food needs to be cooked slowly, he acknowledged the challenges in creating quality content in a market of such rapid change especially when customers, used to so much free content, are unprepared to pay for it.

“We are not deviating from our core competence which is quality content backed by the authority and trustworthiness of the CNN brand.

“What we are doing different is the investment in technology to distribute the content. We produce about 60 pieces of content a day – which is high volume for a quality site. We have no need to be a content farm. We have a unique tone and voice and specialists who live in the market.”

Having said that, the site now allows for User Generated Content with the iReport feature, a product from CNN in the US, which was introduced on CNNGo in late March. CNNGo iReport enables users across Asia to comment on, recommend and share each others’ iReport submissions via Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

The lifestyle and travel portal launched by Turner Broadcasting System in Asia in late 2009 introduced a mobile website last year. This year, it will develop a smartphone app as well as a new version of its mobile website. “It’s a space you have to be in. Mobile content consumption has accelerated rapidly, more than expected, and faster than in the US and Europe,” said Bikram.

He said a mobile website had the potential to reach a larger user base in Asia and while smartphone adoption was growing, penetration was not that high except in markets like Australia, Japan and Korea.

“Having an app is important but you cannot lose sight of the larger user base. You need both platforms – a mobile website and an app – and bigger brands with the resources can afford to do that and we can monetise it better as well.”

He declined to give figures but he said CNNGo had managed to monetise the website with sponsors and advertisers and mobile is offered as a cross-platform sell.

Bikram declared 2011 as the year of growth. While he again could not disclose numbers, he said, “We can see from the traction, the number of comments and the integration with social media that everything is pointing to a growth scale.”

(From Alexa: Cnngo.com is ranked #7,565 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. Roughly 15% of visits to the site are referred by search engines, and the site has a bounce rate of approximately 61% (i.e., 61% of visits consist of only one pageview). Its visitors view 2.7 unique pages each day on average. Visitors to Cnngo.com spend roughly five minutes per visit to the site and 77 seconds per pageview.)

Sydney was launched in late March and Seoul is planned for May. Thus far, it features seven cities in Asia with extended coverage  –Bangkok, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, and now Sydney. It is positioned as a city and regional guide produced by insiders for insiders.

CNNGo Sydney was created by a Sydney-based team helmed by experienced Sydney journalist Matt Khoury as CNNGo Sydney Editor. Matt – who is based at Turner’s Sydney office in Pitt Street — has travelled to almost 60 countries and has written for local and international media, including News Limited and Fairfax.

In the second half of the year, the plan is to take CNNGo beyond Asia. Bikram said that growth  since its launch had been “a good surprise”. “We had to retweak our strategy as we had more growth than expected. We had to make changes in infrastructure level to support the growth. You have to be nimble and ready all the time in the digital online space.”

While he said that the travel and lifestyle space was getting more competitive, it was also a growing segment. “Good content is our differentiation and competition is not a concern.”

He also doesn’t see niche vertical travel sites gaining traction. “We saw a lot of them in the last two to three years but it’s difficult to build a revenue model with niche verticals. Advertisers are looking for reach, across different demographics.”

On whether CNNGo would consider charging for its quality content and create pay walls, he said there are no plans to adopt a subscription model as some media companies such as Financial Times and New York Times have done.

“We want to produce content to delight and entertain our audience. Let’s see how the FT and NYT do – it is tough to charge users for content especially when it is available on such a large scale online.”

Bikram, who spent a part of his career at AOL, said traditional media companies had to figure out a new business model – do you charge the consumers or the advertisers?

The question of course is if good content, like good food, needs to be cooked slowly, how long can it be given away for free?