24/7 Blog

What's Cooking in Social Media at Meredith?

Meredith's Dan Hickey will have the spotlight to himself at Magazines 24/7 as he explains his company's deep plunge into social networking with the creation of the new brand Mixingbowl.com. To get a preview of Dan's presentation, take a look at this video.

Mixing Bowl by Meredith Corporation @ Yahoo! Video

Pay Attention to the Stories About Paid Sites

There continues to be more and more written about content brands looking deeper into the idea of making users pay for access to their content.  (That's why one of our panels is "Are Paid Sites the New Black?  And Can They Help Keep You out of the Red.")  Check out Henry Blodget's Jan. 21 story in The Silicon Alley Insider.  In it, he offers three big ideas to save The New York Times.  One of them is for the paper to consider turning its website into a paid venture.  He offers a bunch of  pros and cons, and runs some traffic and ad-revenue numbers.  It's the kind of brain teaser that could keep a room full of consultants employed until the summer.  But it's definitely thought-provoking. 

Relevant Upcoming Books

 Readers of this blog know that the "Magazines 24/7" conference features speakers Jeff Berman of MySpace and Avinash Kaushik of Google.  To get a better perspective on their presentations, you might try reading two books being published later this winter that explore both companies.  The Wall Street Journal's Julia Angwin traces the history of MySpace beginning with its creation to its purchase by News Corp in Stealing MySpace.  It will be published in March.  If you're looking to understand Google better (and who isn't?), try reading What Would Google Do? by blogging pioneer Jeff Jarvis (who spoke at the very first "Magazines 24/7" in 2005).   The book deconstructs Google and comes up with 40 rules to live and manage by. Pub date:  Jan. 27. 

We're finally moving with the Mobile panel

 Our mobile panel has been finalized.  Just confirmed that Sophia Stuart (right), Executive Director, Mobile, for Hearst Magazines Digital Media, will be a panelist.  She oversees nine mobile sites for Hearst and is a grizzled executive with a decade of digital experience.  She'll be discussing some of her experiences with major advertisers (like Unilver and P&G).  Other panels include Playboy's Ed Lang, who will discuss the brand's mobile series Interns; and InStyle's Simeen Mohsen (who also works with People).  Moderator, Bruce Upbin from Forbes. 

 

24/7 Speaker: "Web 2.0 is so over...."

  Check out Fortune writer Jessi Hempel's provocative column in the current issue on the value of certain social networking companies. Jessi will be interviewing MySpace's Jeff Berman at the "Magazines 24/7" conference in March.  In the article, Hempel writer, "Social networking companies...have loyal fan bases, but they're not exactly minting money.  MySpace's projected $600 million revenue in 2008 falls far short of News Corp.'s billion-dollar sales target for the site."  Hempel goes on to conclude that today's Web 2.0 companies "may find themselves transformed or even ecliped by yet another wave of web innovators."

Should be fascinating to what Berman has to say....and what she'll ask him. 

An iTunes for Magazine Content?

Two days ago, New York Times media columnist David Carr had an excellent story headlined "Let's Invent an iTunes for News."  He suggested that newspaper companies should basically explore again the notion of consumers paying for journalism content.  We think the idea is intriguing.  In fact, that's why two months ago we created our panel for the MPA digital conference "Are Paid Sites the New Black -- and Can They Help Keep You Out of the Red?"  Panelists include Rodale's MaryAnn Bekkedahl, Harvard Business Review's Hank Boye, and an executive to be named at a later date from ESPN The Magazine.  It should be noted that the idea for this panel was planted in my head by ESPN The Magazine's senior editor Steve Malley at the San Francisco airport as we were leaving the AMC conference.  At the time, I thought perhaps he had spent too much time wandering around the lush vineyards of Napa Valley sampling the product  But he was persistent and really ahead of the curve.  It will be interesting to hear what the panelists have to say -- and if the audience agrees. 

This will be a fascinating -- and maybe controversial -- panel

   If you're going to "Magazines 24/7," you should definitely stick around for the panel "Monetize Your Brand's Authority."  It's basically about how magazines are using the reputation of their brands (and their journalists) to help sell products.  It's potentially a new revenue stream for magazine (the brand gets a cut of what's sold).  Nancy Hallberg (left), Chief Strategy Officer of The Parenting Group, will be discussing her company's shopping channel.  Users watch the video of the product (discussed by an editor) on the Parenting site.  With one or two clicks they can buy the product.  Parenting is calling it (cute alert here....) V-Commerce.  The panel also features GamePro's Eric Paterson discussing the magazine's creation of its own branded line of video games.

24/7 Keynote: Three Trends You Need to Know Now

Razorfish's Domenic Venuto may have spent his Christmas holiday working on his keynote presentation for Magazines 24/7.  We just got an outline of it yesterday and it's enormously compelling.  He will be discussing the three digital trends magazine industry professionals need to know now.  We don't want to give too much of it away, but he'll be focusing on aggregation, community and the use of data as the new creative (more on this last point in a few weeks...we hope).

Evangelizing the Evangelist

It hasn't been officially announced yet, but we're fortunate to have landed Google's Avinash Kaushik as the kick-off keynote speaker at the March 3 magazine digital conference "Magazines 24/7."  Kaushik's title is Analytics Evangelist for Google (gotta love those Google titles).  In the digital world he's a rock star.  He's a great speaker.  In fact, check out this video of him speaking in the summer of 2007.  Kaushik can make you laugh when he's talking about web analystics...and that's quite an accomplishment.  He's also the author of the book Web Analystics:  An Hour a Day.  (By the way, proceeds for the book go to Doctors without Borders and The Smile Train).  MPA's web producer swears by the book and it's rumored he may even ask Kaushik for an autograph for his dog-earred edition.  Stay tuned for more on Kaushik's speech.