10 Leading—Edge Innovators

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, July 1, 2000 by Jane E. Zarem

The move to the Web is the world's most perilous business transition, no matter what the industry. Here are 10 web sites based on magazine brands that have extended the model to the new medium in forward-thinking and creative ways.

The magazine industry, like the rest of the brick-and-mortar world, is long past the point of dabbling on the Internet, past the question of "whether." It now resides in the realm of creating robust online businesses that complement print and its accompanying array of other media.

People are still looking over shoulders and copying the best, to be sure. But today, content management, vertical communities and exchanges, commerce and especially convergence are the buzz words.

The Web site has come of age as a powerful means to extend a magazine brand, moving far beyond simply regurgitating print content online as it gets people to interact with the site and with each other. Web sites are used to acquire new customers--all the while blending the power of the print side with the attributes of the new media.

With that in mind, FOLIOMAG.COM decided to identify some of the leaders in this area. Following are 10 magazine-branded Web initiatives that illustrate innovative ways publishers are tapping their resources, expertise, and talent to create rich interactive online environments. They're finding common ground to build loyalty among their visitors. And they're generating increasing revenues (through like many Web operations, they're reticent about revealing how much money they actually generate) to offset costs. These sites, just a sampling of publishing successes on the Web, were selected for their diverse approaches. They continue to evolve--and all are certainly worth exploring.

www.smartmoney.com

Tools for Working the Market

Smartmoney.com has a dedicated staff of more than 90 people, nearly half of whom are tasked with generating up to 98 percent original content for the site, which has moved aggressively past mere static articles and information. Users are drawn to about 100 "calculators"--worksheets lifted from SmartMoney and made dynamic so visitors can calculate the financial impact of home ownership, mortgages, insurance, car leasing, retirement, college tuition, and more.

Another application, Map of the Market, up for just over a year, has "taken off like wildfire," says Mark Frons, editor and CTO, and accounts for "about 10 percent of our site traffic on any given day." The Map is a data visualization program that shows over 600 stocks as squares--proportioned to the size of the company, organized by industry, and colored green or red depending on whether the stock is up or down. Mousing over the stock drills down to charts, news, quotes, earnings estimates, analysts' recommendations, and other data. "It updates automatically," says Frons, "and makes you an instant expert on the market. People love it, and it's one of the tools on the site that has really become identified with SmartMoney. It enhances the magazine and creates an online brand for us."

Smartmoney.com was launched in 1997 as a paid part of The Wall St. Journal's interactive edition. "Our aim from the beginning was to do everything online for personal finance and investing that you couldn't do in print," Frons says. Since the site became free in summer 1999, traffic has quadrupled, average page views per visit have grown one or two pages per month, and average user stays have more than doubled to about 40 minutes a day. "We're a very 'sticky' site," Frons says.

In addition, about 1,000 print subscriptions per week are sold online, which saves a great deal of money in subscriber acquisition costs. It also widens the reach of the New York-based magazine, produced in partnership with Hearst Magazines, to an audience it didn't reach before. "People who don't see us on the newsstand see us on the Internet," says Frons. "The site has had a dramatic effect."

www.redherring.com

A New Economy E-Mail Empire

Redherring.com has an independent editorial staff that daily churns out upwards of eight original stories--quick analyses of what's happening in the new economy. At the same time, writers in the San Francisco-based company's international news bureaus in London and Hong Kong (more bureaus are expected to follow soon) do double duty, producing content for both the Web site and Red Herring. As a result, Redherring.com has undergone "a vast expansion of our international coverage," says editor Rafe Needleman.

Most impressive, though, is the site's vibrant e-mail community. "Catch of the Day" is one of several e-mail newsletters generated by redherring.com. It's a 200-word, single-topic article, with lots of links, written by Needleman and sent daily to over 500,000 readers (more than that subscribe to the magazine) who have opted to receive it. "Catch of the Day" launched in January 1999 and was initially e-mailed to 80,000 people on a Red Herring mailing list. So in one year, its reach has grown more than six-fold.

"Dealfiow" is another recently launched daily e-mail newsletter, whose content Needleman describes as "who's funding what and for how much." A second iteration, called "Dealflow Europe," has followed--with "Dealflow Asia" close on its heels. Among other newsletters tied to the site are "Red Eye," with a circulation of about 90,000, "VCPS," with nearly 40,000, and a half-dozen or so more with catchy names like "Fish or Cut Bait, "Fish Wrap," and "Head Count.