MySpace Welcomes Magazines November 17, 2006
I found an interesting tidbit of information today on the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) website, which provides circulation trend data and marketing information for magazine publishers and advertisers.
MPA provides a list of 36 magazines that have active profiles on MySpace. Basically, these profiles give magazines an outlet for reaching out to tech-minded teens and young people on a personal level.
The MySpace pages of these magazines usually consist of a blog, a profile picture that depicts the most recent magazine cover, video content, featured music, and LOTS of comments. For example, on the Cosmopolitan and Maxim pages, there are over 20,000 and 46,000 friends listed, respectively. These magazines and others have created huge online communities not on their official websites, but on their MySpace pages.
Some of the most developed of the MySpace magazine pages are the pages for Teen Magazines, like CosmoGirl and Seventeen. These sites have links to interactive content on their regular homepages, and feature quizzes and games to engage their teen MySpace audiences.
In a report by Kat Haddon, “A Changing Business Model for a Virtual Phenomenon“, which is featured on the MPA website, the author gives a detailed explanation of the history of MySpace as well as suggestions for ways in which MySpace and other social networking sites can turn their huge audiences into profitable business models. Kat finishes her report with the following quote:
We trust the media we know, and we explore the media we don’t know. But with all our focus on new media, we seem to be forgetting the most important medium: people. Real-life community is an integral part of MySpace’s new proposed business model, because it has the potential to open doors for the future of marketing by bringing us back to real-life relationships.
It seems like magazines understand that the structure of news and media is changing, and some are trying to take advantage of this shift by offering online supplements to their printed content. While newspaper websites tend to be redundant when compared to their printed versions and other news sites, magazines sites supplement their print editions with original content on the Internet. What I’ve noticed from conducting my current research about magazine sites is that while the homepages of magazines don’t offer a lot of geeky Web 2.0 features, they have created a significant amount of content that is easily digestible and fits the format of reading on the Web. I think the presence of magazine MySpace pages is a great example of how old media can reach out to new media audiences without expending a lot of cash or effort.
Here is a list of the magazine MySpace pages features on the MPA website:
ATV Rider
Blender
Bust Magazine
Catalyst
Complex
CosmoGirl!
Cosmopolitan
D Magazine
Drum Magazine
FHM
Filmmaker
Free skier
Guitar Player Magazine
Jane
Maxim
Metal Edge
Metal Maniacs
Mini truckin’
New York Magazine
Nylon
Paste
Seventeen
Shojo beat
Skateboarder
Skiing
Snowboarder
Star
Street Trucks
Stuff
Surfer
Tango
Tokion
Transworld snow
Transworld surf
URB
Vibe
YL
Trackbacks/Pings
Comments
One more for your list: JPG Magazine: http://www.myspace.com/jpgmag
Erin, I think you touched on a great point in the last paragraph of your column, and I see a few subtle but interesting implications.
1) It all started to go downhill for the newspapers when they stopped “hawkin’ ‘em” on street corners. When the newsies’ arms got tired, the whole industry decided they’d call it a day, kick up their feet, and wait for us to come to them. While the papers were waiting for people to log onto their respective websites, magazines got smart. They figured out that if they wanted to reach consumers, they would have to go where the consumers were. Of course, the corner of the busiest intersection in the world is MySpace.
2) Newspapers are using the web as a new distribution model- merely offering web versions and archives of their content on their sites. (Not that I’m against that.. I’ll glue my eyes to the computer screen for an hour any day if it means I don’t have to fling my arms out to wing-capacity on the 2/3 during rush hour, trying to fold the Wall Street Journal in half.) The important difference is that magazines are offering new, interactive, engaging content, which supplements their print products, rather than replaces them. In creating a new arena for consumer engagement, they’re also finding opportunities to supplement revenue by maintaining the value of both their print and multimedia advertisements.
3) Most important of all: The word of the day is VIRAL. As newspapers lie on their proverbial death beds and struggle to adapt to rapid technological changes, they’re inadvertently turning up the morphine drip. By helping to shift their distribution patterns toward the internet, they’re burying their headlines in CyberSpace. I’m convinced that soon enough, I won’t be looking curiously over the shoulder of the guy next to me on the train, to see if the Yankees made the back page of the Daily News. He’ll have read it online at work. This also means that when he reaches his stop, he’ll have nothing to toss on the seat for the next guy to read. I honestly see that as a problem. Yes, it’s cheaper to maintain customers than to recruit them, but at this point, if the newspapers focus on maintaining, they’re headed straight for a collective vegetative state.
MySpacing magazines, on the other hand, have found the antidote. Remember my report’s banter about high school locker doors on steroids? Well, those online quizzes are like centerfolds. I took a quiz on Seventeen’s MySpace, just to be sure they were doing the following: at the end of each quiz, they supply a “cut-and-paste” html code, by which NOT ONLY can a girl quickly and brainlessly display to the world “which glam fashion matches her personality” BUT ALSO her friends can simply click the image in her profile and be taken to the magical world of Seventeen Magazine’s MySpace (coincidentally, one click away from its sub. registration page). Speed, reach, satisfaction, intelligence… all without the cost or agonizing frustration from those stupid “Subscribe today!” postcards.
Brilliant!