Publications News & Articles

Is it possible to be both pretty and geeky?

Increasingly so. The September issue of Vogue Magazine — the most anticipated issue of the year for fashionistas — will be a behemoth ad spectacle as usual. This year, however, ads will send customers online to check out a new feature: ShopVogue.tv.

As if the Web 2.0 bandwagon wasn’t full enough with media outlets expressing interest in blogs, wikis and other sources of user-generated content, Time, Inc. has announced they will add social networking to some of its weekly magazine sites by the end of this year, or early 2008.

Don’t get me wrong - it’s not that the bandwagon is bad; it’s great that so many companies are finally understanding the impact of Web 2.0 and are engaging their users. But many of these decisions, however long overdue, seem to lack coherent strategies.

Analysts estimate that over 80,000 podcasts and 60 million blogs proliferate the Internet. As these figures grow and collaborative media-supporting business applications expand, we figured it was only a matter of time before a publisher recognized the growing need for a unifying industry voice.

Enter Blogger and Podcaster Magazine, just that voice for what parent company Larstan labels the “new media titans.”