Fully Integrated v. Market-Focused

I was having lunch today with a friend in the industry.  We had both been watching some of the B2B deals that have gone through in the past year or so.  While the mega-deal of the year involved the expansion of an already huge Penton Media into the second largest diversified B2B media company in the country, the other two that we discussed saw the formation of two very different kind of companies.

Bill Reilly’s Summit Business Media, although it has plans to get very large, is focused on the service industries–finance, accounting, insurance, etc–exclusively at this point.  And Paul Mackler’s HMP Communications is focused on health.  In fact, last week, Bill Colbert told me for min’s b2b that he, along with VSS, his PE backer, was going to focus on building a single-industry company.  And Ascend Media has recently gone from diversification with Stagnito (health and food) to focus.

Will the new generation of B2B startups aspire to the Reed/Penton/Cygnus model?  Or will they be more focused?