Magazines Still Struggling With This Social Media Business

Magazines have figured out how to use platforms like Facebook -- and to a lesser extent Twitter -- to build brand awareness, but they're still a long way from making money from social media.




That was the message from publishing executives and their resident social media gurus at the MPA's inaugural Social Media conference, held in New York on Tuesday.



http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/magazines-still-struggling-social-media-business-24034?page=0,0

With Plans To Double Revenues, Atlantic Switches Gears On Premium iPad App

On the heels of last week’s news that the high brow culture and news publication The Atlantic posted its first profit “in decades”—and that ad revenues rose 37 percent, with print and online up a respective 27- and 70 percent—Jay Lauf, the mag’s VP and publisher told paidContent that executives are rethinking its premium iPad app. The Atlantic Premium iPad app was under construction last fall, as an adjunct to its Atlantic Digital, which serves as a shell for sales of $4.99 replicas of the print edition. “We felt that we missed that first wave of iPad magazine releases and we wanted to do something a little different, a little more special,” Lauf said in an interview.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-with-plans-to-double-revenues-atlantic-switches-gears-on-premium-ipad-a/

Lady Gaga Sells Magazines. Taylor Swift Does Not.

It's taken some time, but the surefire secret to selling magazines has finally been revealed: Put Lady Gaga on the cover. Women's Wear Daily reports that from Vanity Fair to Rolling Stone to Elle, many publications locked down their best-selling issues of 2010 when Gaga appeared in some form of disrobement on their covers -- a stat that probably isn't that foreign to Gaga -
http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/amplifier/49383/lady-gaga-sells-magazines-taylor-swift-does-not/

Microsoft Introduces Montage, a Magazine-Like, Topic-Based Web App

At LeWeb yesterday, Microsoft demonstrated a pretty, new way to curate the web’s information: Montage.Montage looks and feels a lot like a glossy magazine web or tablet app. It works by allowing the user to pick a keyword or two; the application then pulls data and content from a variety of media-rich and real-time sources, including YouTube (), RSS feeds, Twitter and Bing News. The content is then arranged on the page in a grid format — you get to choose the exact layout — for your own consumption and for sharing with others.
http://mashable.com/2010/12/11/microsoft-montage/

Web Focus Helps Revitalize The Atlantic

WASHINGTON — How did a 153-year-old magazine — one that first published the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and gave voice to the abolitionist and transcendentalist movements — reinvent itself for the 21st century?
By pretending it was a Silicon Valley start-up that needed to kill itself to survive. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13atlantic.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Apple Launches First IAd for IPad, for Disney's 'Tron Legacy'

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The first iAd for iPad will launch this afternoon for the upcoming Disney blockbuster "Tron Legacy." This is a preview of what Apple's mobile ad format will look like on the iPad, and the only iAd planned for Apple's tablet for this year, an Apple spokesman told Advertising Age.
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=147660

Gourmet Live Opens Shop

Ever since Condé Nast revived the Gourmet brand in free iPad app Gourmet Live, the plan has always been to find incremental new revenue through a combination of free and paid content. Yesterday (Dec. 7), an app upgrade added a new Gourmet Live Store that sells special content collections as well as previous weekly issue updates.

A new tab in the Library section of Gourmet Live showcases a “continuing iteration with new collections, new ways of purchasing content and more,” the editors write.


http://www.minonline.com/news/Gourmet-Live-Opens-Shop_16019.html