MySpace the magazine?

Several days ago Ad Age reported that uber-popular social networking site MySpace is in talks with the people at Nylon  magazine. The resulting publication would feature material about top contributers.

- Jeff Jarvis thinks that MySpace would work better as a reality TV show
- Pete Cashmore muses (maybe jokingly) about whether Google's ad deal covers the magazine. If MySpace considered that, it would be pretty brilliant, almost guaranteeing profitability before anyone even bought a book.
- Seamus McCauley thinks MySpace may be looking to aggregate content to create multiple information channels. I think this is a very important point to consider. In essence, it is turning a social network into a citizen journalism community. Building a citizen journalism model on the back end of an established social network may be the viable model we have been looking for - it is pulling the contributions from an established commmunity of contributors as opposed to hoping the contributions will build the community.
- Scott Karp writes that users should be able to create their own magazine

I personally think it is a great idea. Think about all of the amazing stories on MySpace, and no annoying writers to deal with. It gives the company a chance to show that it is more than sexual predators and party planning. They can design the magazine any way they want (or let the readers decide) in order to maintain the brand.  Think magazine's are dead? Take a look at how many people grab People, US Weekly and InTouch at the grocery-store aisles.

In fact, I recommending to Angela Vargo at Southwest's blog that the company take the best posts each month and print a few in their magazine Spirit. It would be a great way to spread great content from employees and draw people to the blog.

What this means for internal communications
Good stories are good stories and smart organizations will not confine themselves to one medium. Remember, not everyone is a dork like us, somepeople are able to pull themselves away from a computer screen once in a while and enjoy holding paper.

Every month or so at Edelman, I get an e-mail asking me to submit material to an employee newsletter. No one ever submits much and the news is often pretty sparse. We also have a periodic publication where a committee of authors submit information.

I enjoy both of these publications, but every time I read them I can't help but think that they aren't terribly inclusive or efficiently produced.

One option is to make the publication a blog as well as a print edition. However, even more innovative companies can implement blogging platforms with defined categories, and automatically aggregate information for any number of publications.

In the end, finding a way to combine on and off-line material can be an effective way for companies to save money, increase employee readership and provide more relevant material.

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Technorati Tags: Myspace

Comments

[Seamus McCauley]

Jeffrey - thanks for your comment. I'd only add that, re "whether Google's ad deal covers the magazine", Google has tried to monetise magazines before and failed - see e.g. http://qurl.com/cyf2g. The AdWords model just doesn't seem to lend itself well to print.

[Jeffrey Treem]

Seamus,

Thanks for mentioning the post on Google Adwords' previous failure. I know that they also played around with ads in the Chicago Sun-Times print edition.

I still think that is you combine the idea of multiple, more targeted magazines with the AdWords concept (And you sell the adds dirt cheap, as part of a larger AdWords offering) it might work.

[Steve Farber]

I agree, Jeffrey: a good story's a good story no matter what the medium, and companies should explore any and all ways to capture and communicate them.