FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

Why has mobile yet to, well, mobilize? There are a number of reasons—a few of my favorites are:

• Economic Downturn: As mobile was ramping up, the economy slowed down. Advertising budgets, particularly test budgets for new media, became difficult to acquire.

• Growth of Social Media: The development of Facebook and Twitter stole some of the spotlight. Coupled with the tight economy, advertisers sought lower-cost ‘social media,’ perceived to be viral and free in nature. Ironically, mobile has been silently driving much of the traffic behind social media, which was confirmed when Facebook released mobile figures in advance of their IPO.

• Lack of Consumer Data: More...

Once derided as Johnny-come-latelys to the digital media game, traditional publishers are now becoming enthusiastic start-up accelerators, buying or incubating early-stage companies that aim to disrupt the media market. Bonnier has just joined the club with its own Innovation Lab, a 14-week program seeking applicants who are interested in "developing revolutionary products and services that will change the way major media companies engage with their audiences." The idea being that Bonnier, like other publishers, has already waded its way into the modern media world and knows a thing or two about digital business and audience development, marketing and content s More...

Like most of you, I pay close attention to what is going on in the event space. I find myself particularly interested in trends and the overall outlook for our industry. Not surprisingly, some events are up, others are down and many find themselves relatively flat. However, being internal optimists, we always look for the silver lining—exhibit space was off, but attendance was up. We had more exhibitors, but the average booth size was down. We are the masters of the spin for our customers, but what is really in store for trade shows?

The Center for Exhibition Industry Research recently released research on “More...

To paraphrase Senator John McCain—let’s have some straight talk. The newsstand as we know it is nearing endangered species status. How much further do newsstand sales have to decline before publishers take corrective action?  

It’s well known that newsstand sales are in the dumper, but the depth of the audited publication sales slide in the first half of this year is even greater than has recently been reported by the media. A 9.6 percent sales decline (reported by the media) is huge, but the extent of the actual slide is more than 20 percent greater.

The reason for the difference is that the numbers reported by the media only represent the sales status of titles that were audited in both the fir More...

An announcement went out today, but if you haven't seen it, we've decided to put Foliomag.com on a metered paid-access model. Here's why:

Our mission has always been to provide you with the most up-to-date and in-depth resources to help media companies succeed. Our news and analysis lead the industry. Our blogs, columns and more offer the context and perspective you need to optimize your business.

At the core of our decision was this: We felt that it's very important to place a clear value on our content, and to recognize the value that our best customers see in what we do. Also, as a brand that covers the digital-media transformation, we seek to not just reflect what the industry is doi More...

REMAG’s sprawling and multi-faceted kiosk program would not be easy to announce in two to three words on a newsstand magazine cover. In fact, it would be hard to explain in 25 words or less. It’s new, fresh, innovative and, from a blogger’s point of view, a little complicated. But the program is, in fact, all about the newsstand sales of magazines, so it deserves our attention and comprehension.

REMAG’s Blake Patterson called me to give me an update on the program. Since I blogged about this last year, More...

While there are pockets of good news on the ad revenue side of the publishing business these days, overall publishers are still duking it out on the front lines. This is illustrated for better or worse in Time Inc.'s 10-Q report released last week. The publishing giant's revenues dropped nine percent in the second quarter to $858 million and six percent for the half to $1.6 billion. Every segment within the publishing division recorded a loss in revenues. And the losses prompted the company to warn that because "soft market" conditions are expected to continue through the third quarter, the fair v More...

Joe Pompeo at Capital New York reports that Huffington Post has made its Huffington app, launched in June, free. The app's single copy price was 99 cents, $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year and, at the time, reflected the you-don't-get something-for-nothing mentality now so prevalent in digital content publishing—especially when producing a magazine app like this one is still far from efficient or low-cost.

But, in hindsight, Huffington had clearly wrestled with whether to charge for the app o More...

My grandfather passed away many years ago at the ripe old age of 88. He left a legacy that included perpetual fruitcakes (not referring to my brother, but to a multi-year post-death pre-paid Christmas delivery of doorstop cakes to everyone in the family).  

This happening in the 1980s gave the family an annual holiday giggle and we wondered why grandpa did this (was it a six-year special or a legacy joke?). Since this was pre-Internet and, most likely, pre-credit card renewal, grandpa, likely wrote a check, mailed it and ultimately balanced his checkbook (a real book).

Which gets me to 2012 and other types of legacies. How about the legacy subscription? I spent an hour Saturday morning trying to cancel More...

During IAC's second quarter earnings call today, chairman Barry Diller provided some feedback on the future of Newsweek as a print magazine. While the print version's survivability has been endlessly speculated on, Diller took an opportunity in the call to put the issue in better, if not entirely clear, focus.

In answering a question from an analyst on the outlook for Newsweek/The Daily Beast and whether there were plans to make it a "lighter asset," Diller noted that the brand is doing better overall. "The brand is now much better and stronger than when we acquired it," he said. "There has been a true improvement in the book and Tina Brown and her staff have done a superb job."
More...

For more than 35 years, magazine media professionals have come together to at the FOLIO: Show, the largest magazine industry event—three times larger than the next-closest event, and the only one that attracts the best and brightest from all sectors of the industry, whether consumer, b-to-b, association, city and regional, enthusiast and more. The FOLIO: Show is also the only event designed to provide industry education to all the disciplines, including editors, salespeople, audience developers, marketers, Web strategists and more.

In an effort to evolve with the changing media landscape and deli More...

It’s an article of faith among digital publishers that content partnerships are one of the key levers for success. If you’re operating a small site and you want to grow, you need to partner up with big distributors that can serve as megaphones, amplifying your content and, the theory goes, bringing a new audience back to you. If you’re running a big site, you need partners to provide fresh content, and lots of it, to satisfy the millions of eyeballs arriving each day.
 
And so we live in a partnership ecosystem. As a medium-sized player, we at The Atlantic have partnerships going in both directions. We send some of our best stories to sites that have huge traffic. We take smart stories from smaller si More...