Staying in is the new going out. When it comes to getting a life, there's only one thing to do – switch on the computer, catch up with your mates and let the world come to your laptop. You don't even need to step out the door. Shopping, celebrity gossip, social networking and online magazines are now all at the mercy of a mouse.
The Facebook Phenomenon
The internet fastest growing phenomenon, Facebook, is a social network that has become one of the net's hottest properties. Social networking is another symptom of how our entire lives are shifting onto the super information highway. Already we send messages online, work online, order our food online, date online, shop online, watch TV online and read online magazines. Facebook was created by Harvard drop-out Mark Zuckerberg, and in three years he has already courted media giants like News Corp who are desperate to get their hands on the product. Zuckerberg has turned down offers of over $1bn for the business. Like Google and Hotmail, Facebook has now entered everyday vocabulary as 18-35 year olds log on, search the massive database and find people they bumped into in some random part of the world ten years ago. Whether it's a lost love, ex work colleague or your boss, people are nosey. Like Friends Reunited before it, Facebook is a chance to work out who's the most popular, what your boss ate for breakfast and to check out your mate's holiday snaps.
Online magazines – Publishing Trends
Reading online magazines is the next logical step – especially for the teen and Facebook market. Now some teen mags are even side stepping the print process altogether and just launching as stand alone online magazines. Jellyfish is a case in point. Lori Miles was editor of Mizz magazine in 1985. Writing in the Press Gazette, she wondered where all the teen magazines had gone – Just Seventeen, Smash Hits, 19 – these teen magazines used to be huge. Now they've all folded. So what's happened to the teenager magazine market? It hasn't, Miles argued, disappeared, it's just gone online.
"Teens live on the net," Miles wrote. "It's where all their friends are, where they find their music and fashion, movie trailers, celebrity gossip and occasionally information for homework."
Digital magazine for Teens
One noticeable thing about Jellyfish is that it resembles the traditional print teen magazines. It's still the same product, just on a different platform. There's still a need for good editorial content, it's just the medium its delivered in that has changed. One of the bonuses about online magazines is that users can flick from the magazine, to their email, to downloading the latest music release. It's a natural holistic step moving magazines online to cater to the Facebook generation. Now readers can download online magazines and have them delivered straight to their inbox.
Online magazines are the future
The power of the net is increasing. Just about every business out there is trying to take advantage of its allure. Online magazines are the future. The fact that Facebook is adding an estimated 100,000 users a day, with an already 27 million active users* speaks volumes of the incredible influence the internet can have. Facebook has a ‘network effect' where friends get each other to join, and all it takes for an online magazine to be a hit is for it to become a word-of-mouth success online. Success can spread like a rash on the internet – it is a truly democratic space where the market decides what they want. As such, traditional print magazines are at risk of losing valuable and new customer bases if they don't move to an online magazine format.
The decline of print
In an article in The Guardian newspaper on the Facebook phenomenon, there is an illuminating extract on an interview with media mogul Rupert Murdoch. A reporter from the Wall Street Journal asked Murdoch why he hadn't bought the newspaper group, Tribune. "Mr Murdoch said it was because readership of its newspapers was declining, ‘That's because everyone's going to MySpace,' quipped the reporter. ‘I wish they were. They're all going to Facebook,' the media mogul retorted."
Which kind of says it all. It may be a worry for the traditional print publishing industry, but there's no doubt that we are witnessing a massive shift in the way magazines are produced, with more and more publishing giants turning to the internet and investing in online magazines.
*(figures from The Guardian newspaper, ‘Facebook challenges MySpace as place for the cool set to hang out' June ‘07 )