Magazines ruled the 80s and early 90s. High quality magazines were produced for almost every specialist subject, and until the Internet came along, they were frequently the only source of content and entertainment for specialist hobbies and subjects.
The Internet has changed all that. You can now find out more about any subject online than anywhere else – the web is the ultimate source of specialist information. And even though you cannot replace the tactile nature of quality design and paper online (yet!), many magazines are finding that this feature is not enough to keep copy sales from declining and advertising revenue from going online.
The majority of publishers are struggling with the idea of protecting their current business models and making the most of the online opportunity. A growing number, however, are really starting to think beyond this idea that the web is just an additional channel for their content or brand.
Here are some of the most recent examples of magazine reinvention:
- Time Inc reforming Life as a photo portal,
- Meredith closing the print version of Child and absorbing it as a channel within its parenting portal,
- Hachette closing down the print versions of Premiere and Elle Girl in favour of online-only versions.
I will look for more examples and add top this list over the coming weeks.
I have just read a great post by Gina Bianchini on the Ning Blog which gives great advice on how to create a great social network.
The advice goes along the lines of comparing creating social networks to organising great parties. And the analogy works for me.
It goes something like this:
1) have a great idea and host,
2) set the mood,
3) invite the right people,
4) spend time setting up,
5) open the doors,
6) crank it up to the next level,
7) expect gate crashers, and finally,
8) bask in the afterglow of creating something special.
My experience in creating social networks (isporty being the most recent) fits these 8 stes perfectly.
Spent some time on new ‘super-easy’ blogging platform tumblr. It takes less than 10 seconds to get started and the interface is extremely straightforward. I can see how a tool like this could take off with a much wider, non-tech savvy audience.
I know WordPress, Blogger and the others are painless, but the interfaces are environments still more suited to relatively experienced users – tumblr isn’t.
Just as I am writing this, my wife is sitting next to me and she has just commented on the tumblr interface and how less techy and how much more friendly she feels it is. My wife doesn’t blog, yet. But this could well be the kind of thing that makes non-bloggers like her take the plunge.
If you use Basecamp for project management or Backpack to organise your information, you will already know that the company who made these tools (37signals) is pretty smart. Now, they have decided to reinvent contact management by launching a new web-based solution called Highrise.
I have taken the tour and in the space of 2 minutes realised how powerful this thing will be for me and my business. The main features that stand out for my own needs are;
• You can ‘bcc or cc’ Highrise on all outgoing email, and it stores the mail with the contact you sent it to,
• You can create folders (they call them cases) and bunch together related tasks/mail/people – this is great for PR campaigns.
• You get the full history of your individual contacts (emails, action, notes, birthdays).
Anyway, I’m signing up. They’ve got me.
Two things happened to me tonight: I went to an Internet People open mic session in London and when I got back home, I read Robert Scoble’s latest post – Web2.0 consolidation ahead?
And it made me think.
The Internet People open mic session was all about the lessons that the gathered London entrepreneurs had learnt. After the usual “you have to have passion”, “partner with someone you trust” kind of advice, Chris Ward (founder of isporty) stood up and said something along the lines of, “Closed networks can no longer scale in the UK, and, therefore web start-ups cannot rely on revenue models that require scale”.
I know Chris well, and have heard this view a few times whilst working with him. But it’s not until I got back home, and read Robert Scoble’s post (posted roughly at the same time Chris was talking – spooky), that I really started thinking that they are both talking sense.
Advertising is great, but start-ups need to do the maths to work out what traffic levels are needed to match their revenue needs. You need sites of scale to bring in £10K or more of CPC revenue every month. It is imperative, therefore to look for other revenue streams. Chris and isporty are aiming to make money first and foremost by offering social media tools and expertise to sports-related brands. This may well be their unique way of making enough money to give the site and company time to grow and develop.
Mashable – the site for social network news – has just announced the launch of a French version. The site will kick off as a blend of translated or adapted news from the Mashable mothership and a fair bit of original posts from a team of four French bloggers.
There are a number of very cool social network and web 2.0 sites developing in France and I will be keeping my eye on Mashable France. It’s also a great way to learn certain French words (“breasts on YouTube” = “seins sur YouTube”). Ok, that may be a slightly childish use for the site…
I got an email invitation from my friend Tim to join Twitter: “This site Twitter keeps getting mentioned on influential blogs and websites,” he said, “It’s a fast burner at the moment in the States. Sign up like I have, and let’s see if it’s any good.”
Ok, so I have done that… now what?
A few days later, and I am embarassed to say that I don’t quite get it (yet). I’m usually quite fast off the mark with new communication stuff, but not here.
There’s already a load of praise and excitement for this micro-publishing system and I listened to a recent TWiT podcast where Leo Laporte and his friends were going on about how addictive the whole thing is. There just has to be something in it. Yet, I can’t help but feeling that unless there is a relevant reason why you want to get one-line updates of my whereabouts, mood or content of my shopping trolley, then I won’t be using this just yet.
I am wondering whether this is taking off in the US as SMS text messaging never really did. In Europe everybody took to texting years ago, and it will be interesting to see if Twitter takes off over here as much as it does in the States.
I have a business called DigitalDNA and now I have the blog to go with it. Good.
My background is in online media and, usuprisingly, my business focuses on advising companies on their web strategies and helping them deliver. DigitalDNA aims to grow into a partnership of experienced internet people offering a range of expertise. I will be inviting these experts to contribute to this blog in the next few days.
I am 
