On Monday the LinkedIn announced a new Follow Company button that lets individuals follow a brand or company page. The feature is essentially an expansion of functionality that was already in place, but from within the network itself. Now companies can allow individuals to follow them from outside the LinkedIn ecosystem by clicking on a button embedded in their websites.

According to the blog post by LinkedIn product manager Mike Grishaver announcing the new feature, AT&T, Starbucks, Sony and American Express, among others, are already u More...

The 84th Academy Awards are taking place this Sunday, February 26, and the magazine industry is taking note. Vanity Fair cashed in on the upcoming Awards with its March Hollywood issue, in which ad pages spiked 44 percent YOY. Time Inc.’s celebrity staple PEOPLE is also getting into the Oscar game, with Academy Award specials in print, digital and retail.

PEOPLE dubbed the Oscars “the Super Bowl of celebrity style”, and put together a special print publication to commemorate the occasion. The issue includes style tips, designer news and an O More...

Barnes & Noble today announced a new $199, 8GB Nook tablet. The pricing and configuration put it right in line with Amazon's Kindle Fire.

Meanwhile, the company has dropped its Nook Color pricing as well, from $199 to $169. The move clearly targets the Kindle Fire, but it's also an attempt to open the throttle on device and content sales even further. Both were up significantly, according to third-quarter financials.

Where B&N's new Nook More...

“If you’re going to have a magazine in 2012, there better be a point to it,” says Mike Albanese, publisher of SPIN.

In what may seem like an obvious statement, Albanese manages to summarize the movement of the entire magazine industry. Print is often no longer substantial enough to act as a publication’s sole business; but it still holds a place in editorial strategy and audience fondness. SPIN, with a lowered print frequency, slashed rate base and realigned digital focus, is positioning its print product to be just that.

The new SPIN, now published six times a year, has a larger trim size (up 9.5” x 12 More...

Few things have caused more disruption for business marketers and business media than the changing nature of demand generation. Email, the Internet and social media have enabled drastic new ways to generate demand and engage with customers and prospects. As a result, many of the laws of physics in advertising and marketing - reach and frequency, brand awareness, brand preference and call to action - have been upended and replaced by brand generation to create and sustain a more substantial engagement with customers. The challenge for b-to-b marketers and media providers alike however, is that we are still too often operating in the old world, focused on driving “opens”, “clicks” and “likes”, which do not suggest customer inte More...

The year, as it always does, has flown by and we're already in the midst of compiling our annual list of the top innovators in the magazine business and the markets that intersect and influence it—the Folio: 40.

We're excited to announce that starting now, you can have a hand in how the list turns out by nominating a colleague—either at your company or from another one—that has had a meaningful impact on a product, company or even market.

We're looking for nominations in the following categories:

C-Level Visionaries
Top execs that transform culture, company or markets

Industry Influencers More...

The sale of Ziff Davis Enterprise to online marketing company QuinStreet Friday raises some interesting and, on the surface, worrisome thoughts on the role brands and content play in connecting buyers and sellers.

I should mention that we don't yet really know how QuinStreet is planning to incorporate ZDE's brands into its operation. The company declined to offer any details in that regard. What we do know is ZDE employees are in the dark as well, with the bulk of them helping transition the brands before their positions are phased out. As many as 100 of More...

Demand Media has lost three of its founders. According to a report from paidContent, Larry Fitzgibbon, Joe Perez and Steven Kydd are leaving the company.

Fitzgibbon was EVP of international operations; Perez was executive vice president of products; and Kydd acted as EVP of studios. All three have already been removed from Demand’s masthead.

A rep for Demand said the exits were “just coincidence”, and departed execs will “pursue separate opportunities and new business ventures� More...

Every now and then, when our own newsstand landscape begins to look too homogenous and our cover formulas too tired we look overseas to shake us up a little.

Or a lot—the polybag premium craze that swept our consumer publications a decade or two ago (but who’s counting) was sparked by one UK company.

Polybag premiums to some degree have, after many years, run their course here in the U.S., but any publisher with a serious commitment to a UK distribution is aware that it is still the vernacular on the English newsstand.

Partworks are a UK newsstand innovation that take the practice of polybagging premiums to a new level. They offer expensive, high-quality premiums on every product and, as the name indicates, More...

More than a few magazine and media executives spent the holidays putting the finishing touches on deal closures. We're only 3 weeks into January and there's been a flurry of M&A action—from decently big deals to small.

Here's a recap:

Today of course Meredith announced it's buying Allrecipes.com from Reader's Digest Association, advancing a deep dive strategy into the food vertical as fast as RDA is pulling away from it, having also bought Everyday With Rachael Ray from them. The deal closely followed Meredith's More...

In an attempt to protect copyrighted material, the U.S. Congress has been mulling a proposal to curb access to websites, search engine results and domain names, among other things, something that has seemingly outraged many in the digital community.

The bill, entitled the Stop Online Piracy Act [H.R. 3261], has so infuriated Wikipedia that it blacked out its site today. Google has also promoted the bill’s destruction, with its clever logo on its homepage blacked out for the remainder of the day and linke More...

THE PATIENT: Success
AGE: 114 years
VITALS: Improving
PROGNOSIS: Good

The kind of high-profile success that Success’ readers desperately desire has largely eluded the magazine itself over the course of its long life. The title has encountered at least two near-death experiences, yet fought back to publish another day. On that basis alone, some may award this book a medal for its mettle.

The most recent incarnation of the magazine, which emerged from ownership’s self-induced coma in 2008, shows promise. (Its claimed, unaudited, circulation is 200,000.) It als More...