Digital Magazine Apps, Widgets, and Embeds

November 26th, 2009 | Posted in Blog, publishing | Comments
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Digital magazine apps and editions will evolve rapidly.  We expect new features and sharing capabilities as well as some healthy competition from the digital platforms.  Share is the essence of circulation and viral growth of any brand, and most especially magazines.  If a magazine, book, blog, news site does not have something worth sharing it may also lack content worth bookmarking or saving, or even reading.

Paid content walls and barriers to sharing provide short term revenue and long term brand destruction costs as a strategy for most publishers.  It does take a lesson or two on the value of both viral marketing and cost of traffic to understand that the reader is valuable, especially for the advertising driven publication.  And don’t we want advertisers to fund the magazine?

For both consumer and trade magazines I find the advertising of equal value to the content. Magazine apps can also provide magazine advertiser value in digital formats. We must think beyond traditional web banner ads. We must also consider the magazine apps sharing capabilities that relates in realtime (as a shared tweet) to other people receiving the share that aren’t on mobile application platforms and can link directly to the shared magazine website or digital edition. Of course, this means that publishers must include magazine application social sharing capabilities when developing their magazine apps for the iPhone and Andriod mobile platforms.

Magazine Apps

There are magazines that have strong content value with subscription price points that can maintain must-have-it readers. For these publishers, it is completely understandable that they protect their digital content.

For other publishers, I recommend you find ways to share your content and track the benefits of real people consuming and sharing your content and advertising messages.

I have included some digital magazine embeds below.


In 2010 we will see more magazine apps, digital magazines, magazine widgets, and other unique ways to connect with the visual communication advantages of the magazine brand and it’s ability to carry and advertising message.

Google Wave – Email Publishing

November 10th, 2009 | Posted in Blog, media, publishing, strategy | Comments

I received my Google Wave invite from a new twitter pal (thanks again Alice @aliceinthewater http://twitter.com/Davorado/status/5576326179) and can see that it’s probably going to help bridge people to a new method of communicating.  Not that I think it will eliminate email the way we know it today.  At least not for another 5 years.  But, it strongly supports the social networking models, streams, and posting that we are growing familiar with in most social platforms.

It will be very interesting to see how the Wave is received and what new products (widgets) are created to add more value to the Google platform.  I can already see that I’ll use it for anything internal for my company to eliminate the email mess.  Maybe this process will force in some outside participants to adopt the tool in a similar way that critical mass fueled the adoption of the fax machine.

I hope!

Magazine Web Sites as Enhanced Versions of Editorial Mission

November 10th, 2009 | Posted in Blog, strategy | Comments
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Condé Nast shows a good sign that they understand the value of their publication website offerings. It’s refreshing to see an industry leader make moves that all publishers should be making online to insure that the magazine brand lives beyond the print magazine page.  Digital media elements of the traditional print magazine can be unique and I’m looking forward to seeing other publishers make moves toward their own magazine apps, websites, and digital editions to be a unique element of the brand tailored to the medium.

We have six iPhone Apps and more on the way, and GQ is the first magazine to launch an iPhone App that’s a full replica of the print magazine, complete with sponsors and circulation.

via Condé Nast Moving Away From Magazine Web Sites as Print ‘Companions’ – emedia and Technology @ FolioMag.com.

And regardless of the media channel, we must remind publishers to enable and facilitate social sharing and collaboration with the content published to maximize utility, brand, and content value.