What is Digg?39 Comments
- martinj88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11We will always need something to read on the toilet, laptops just aren't compatible with that at the moment.
I still buy PC Zone and love it and I don't think there going any ware any time soon. - tw0k1ngs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I still think some magazines have their place... as magazines such as GQ, Esquire, and of course Maxim have their place in aesthetic appeal.
- aguynamedben, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4What you have to do is get the subscription cards inside Maximum PC that let you get 12 months for just $12. It didn't come with the CD or anything, and cheap as hell. MPC has been pretty solid over the years, but the web just lets you customize your content so much more.
- diggapleeeze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yep. You will be hard pressed to find a website that can get access to celebrities and politicians, let alone high quality photographers to shoot, as you will with those magazines.
- bmoseley07, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I agree with tw0k1ngs. I get a lot of my content from the web, but there is a certain nostalgic appeal that only magazines have. Of course, I buy less magazines than before, but I probably won't ever abandon magazines completely. I mean, what am I supposed to do while I sit on the toilet.
- diggapleeeze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Or on an airplane.
- Langford, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Internet killed the magazine star.
- HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well, you could use your laptop while on the toilet but I figure most guys will end up not reading an article and will instead nvaigate their way to a porn site and watch a video...
- Dr00B, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As a general rule, magazines have a cover price that will account for a significant portion of revenue, allowing a the magazine to maintain editorial integrity. Internet sites are on the whole free and rely solely on advertising for their revenues. So, who's more likely to be beholden to advertisers and therefore corrupt? The one with a paying readership, or the one that's paid for by adverts alone...
- DrScott, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What about Journals (Medical, Communication, Technological, etc.)? Which mostly consist of published works about a specific topic, research which comes from big funding.
- prockcore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I really do miss getting Nibble with all the source listings for my Apple ][e. It was like opening a present every month.
- diggapleeeze, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This is an article about the future of computer magazines.
- diggapleeeze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmmm, cover of Vogue versus front page story on Suicide Girls.
No comparison. - gamesector, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I still buy magazines, most people I know do too. They won't die.
Dumb article, buried as lame. - necrisque, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Books and printed paper didn't die with the Internet. Why should magazines? The magazime media still holds that advantage of having something in your hands, that many connect to why books are still popular. Some certain feeling about it. They look great with their high quality prints and are super portable, so you can easily show things to others in quite an impressive manner. What will you do as an internet user? Tell off the back of your mind, provide an URL or bring printed sheets?
- estvir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I will occasionally buy a magazine if I know there is worthwhile content in there even if I have read it on the net (As scans or just some site).
It's kind of like how I could buy a game online (Like via Steam) or I could get a boxed copy - I'd pick the 'physical' version any day as a lot of the time the boxes are awesome, have manuals, occasionally extras (Maps, figurines, t-shirts or whatever), etc.
I wish the old Sci-Fi mags were still around and if I can actually find a magazine, like Nexus, in a newsagent I'll buy it instantly. - baxtermaddux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"You will be hard pressed to find a website that can get access to celebrities and politicians, let alone high quality photographers to shoot, as you will with those magazines"
thats a great point. i had not really even thought about that. it will be interesting to see in the next few years if any sites emerge that have such pull with celebrities. - zeroSignal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is an article about tech magazines.. But..
I can find most of the content I need online - there's no doubt about it. Infact, I can find ALL the content I need online. But there's the issue of what I want. I buy CAR magazine religiously, and have been for the past few years. I buy it because it gives me great photography, and great timeless articles (like the one about following the route of the Orient Express in a Rolls Royce Phantom). So yeah, web sources can provide all the content I need, but nothing really beats sitting down in a comfortable chair or something, and reading my favourite car magazine with some quiet music in the background and a glass of beer. - el_taco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1heh.. that's the only reason I buy magazines.
- rajivm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I used to read magazines such as Popular Science, PC World, PC Mag. etc, but I have slowly stopped subscribing to these-- there is no reason to, everything I want to read in them, I have already read. I can find the same content, even better content that is more specific to what I am interested in online. Often times I find the articles that are in these print magazines, although interesting, are targeted at the general consumer rather than the more niche tech-savvy. I can find more specific tech-oriented articles online at sites such as BetaNews, CNET, Engadget, and more-- or even stuff you would never find in print such as TechCrunch, and Digg lets me find even more, quicker. There are even very aesthetically pleasing high quality "online magazines" such as A List Apart. The role of a computer magazine for most computer enthusiasts seems be diminishing.
However, I do not think magazines as a whole are becoming worthless. Even though I can find editorials and regular national/political etc news online, it does not compare to some of the content in mags such as Time and The Economist. Also its sometimes nice to move away from the lcd monitor. As a result I still subscribe to these. - turpenine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2maybe its just me, but i don't sit down for a good read of the heart and human muscle journal... I could see maybe 3 people doing that.
- willski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And you think there aren't ads on the web? I see six ads on that one page; for Microsoft, nVidia, and OCZ in addition to their own product. You have to determine if a publication is honest or shilling for advertisers yourself. Whether it's on the web or in print has nothing to do with that.
- brundlefly76, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I still pay over $100/yr for UK Linux Format because its probably the only Linux publication on earth that is actually fun to read.
Linux Journal, Linux Magazine, and most Linux websites - are about as engaging as a man page.
I actually think that there is more room for many more computer publications on the newsrack - they just need to be professionally produced by magazine people, not computer people. I would kill for a great Perl magazine. - SanTe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@biggeek: Huh?!... For the 90% of us in the world who are Windows users Maximum PC is the *only* PC mag worth reading, in my opinion, and I've tried dozens over the years. Yes it has ads, as do virtually all print magazines, but it certainly is no slouch in the content department.
And aguynamedben is right -- $12 for 12 issues is the best deal going. I paid $20 a year for Maximum PC for years and never felt shortchanged. Their new $12/year offer is just icing on the cake IMO. - yenster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, the teaser specifically talks about computer magazines and it would appear that the print editions of computer magazines are seriously in decline. Anybody remember back in the late 80's when 'Computer Shopper' weighed 20 pounds, was 12,800 pages thick and you had to borrow a hand truck to get it out of the store into your car? :) Now 'CS' looks like the betting sheet from the local horse track. However, this category is one of the rare exceptions. Want to go broke real quick? Start up a Web-only magazine. Generally, the online-only publications that actually make it past Issue 24 are few and far between. As someone who owns an agency which produces online and print ads and also does publication design and has "brought up" a few new publications over the past decade, I can tell you that the vast majority of successful periodicals are local or regional in nature. It's very difficult to target your audience on a Web-based publication and restrict your readership to those folks whom your advertisers actually wish to reach. Your advertiser (say, the local Frys Electronics, a huge computer retailer) doesn't want readers from 7,000 miles away--they want everyone in the immediate surrounding counties. The Web is still very poor at that (what advertisers call "TMC," Total Market Coverage, a sort of saturation bombing for eyeballs). For that reason, it's tough to find advertisers for a Web-based, whereas businesses will tend to fall all over themselves for the crummiest, shoddiest small town paper. Even my local small-town 5,000-copy daily is getting advertising from the likes of WalMart, Target, Circuit City and Best Buy...how many online magazines get that kind of attention from advertisers? Maybe 1 in 1,000.
So far, most major publication with an online presence ('Time,' 'Newsweek,' etc., and just about every major newspaper) are relying on the print edition to carry the biggest load of revenue in order to support the online edition. And for the vast majority of smaller publications, the "online edition" is merely a teaser to get you to subscribe to the print edition.
Eventually, print will die and that's fine with me. I already do a good mix...broadcast, print, online...so I'm pretty well prepared for wherever the publishing and advertising and communication industries go. However, print still is the 800 pound gorilla to online's rhesus monkey and I see change happening very, very slowly--much slower than I had thought it would a decade ago. - andyatkinson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I appreciate the graphic design and panache of Wired. They still break some new tech ground, and have been doing it since 1993. If use bestdealmags.com, magsforless.com or similar, you are paying $1 per issue or less, so cost is not really an issue IMO.
- mvone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1magazine cover price and subscriptions account for less than 30% of a magazines revenue. the rest is all ads.
- UrsusMorologus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Tech publishing has gotten hit with multiple whammies. It's survival truly is in question.
One thing a lot of people don't think about is that tech publications really got smacked hard when the tech bubble burst. When the Internet bubble was boooming the trades were all huge with ads and they were buying all the content they could in order to keep the editorial-to-ad ratio balanced (the post office charges more for mostly-ad publications than they do for mostly-editorial magazines, really). When the bubble burst, probably 90% of the ad revenues disappeared overnight, and many of the magazines simply were not able to adjust to the change in weather fast enough (Red Herring and Upside are a couple of good examples but there are lots of others). So the ones that are still around even a few years after are still struggling with relatively low ad rates--the days of the 400 page PC Shopper are gone, largely due to business reasons that have nothing to do with the Internet.
Another problem is on the reader-demand side. As the writer notes, readers aren't subscribing at the same rates they used to. And even when there are fixed subscription rates with things like professional subscriptions (free magazines like eWeek so forth), the readership rates are way down--people just don't read every article like they used to. In turn, that negatively affects the amount of money that publishers can get from the smaller pool of advertisers.
A lot of the publications are essentially trying to move into an online-mostly business model where costs are lower, but there are a lot of problems with that. For one, technologists don't click ads; they block them. And the online ads generally provide less revenue than their print counterparts. And there are a lot of startup sites that are eating the lunch of some of the established brands (Tom's Hardware, Anandtech, etc).
The tech sites are also paying freelancers a lot less than used to as well. The rates today are the same as they were 15 years ago, on a dollar basis, meaning substantially lower when normalized for inflation. This means they are attracting a substantially weaker freelance pool. They are already in a race to the bottom at this point, and frankly I would not be surprised to see some of these publications start using talent from India on a regular basis.
So yeah, the internet has contributed to the decline substantially (namely via the increased amount of low-cost online-only competition) but that is not the biggest source of tech publication pain. The real problem is a lack of advertisers, and to an extent the technologist community itself is partly to blame for that.
I don't know how bad this trend is. It may be that this sector is the first to go online-only. That may be good, it may be bad, too early to tell. - kloud213, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Suicidegirls has all that plus more, its an awesome website for more than just porn. Great writers and great interveiws by Daniel Robert Epstein
- d3c0yn4m3l355, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Idd I wonder how other magazines go by. Certain magazines are read by only a small group of people who are probaly more loyal then 'the computer user' in general. Even this I seriously have my doubts as I think its more the normal computer magazines die, but specific magazines who go into specific computer technical material are again read by a small loyal group
- josegutz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Are you kidding? Cosmopolitan and Glamour are still my favs since they serve multiple purposes. One of them is wiping my bum when I run out of toilet paper. You know the other...
I was alone... - billyh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I've got a subscription or two with my Zinio app, and I don't even read those anymore. Even my 87 year old Mom doesn't read the paper anymore. Her MacBook does it all for her.
- danceparty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I hope print will die eventually. But I know there will always be stragglers who resist change. But I must say, the 2 magazines I do receive in the mail (I only get them because I got the subscriptions for free) get me a little excited when I see them in my mailbox. But I would never renew those subscriptions and will never subscribe to any sort of print magazine or newspaper again mostly because I think it's a waste of paper and it's an inefficient way of getting information / content to people.
- miker71, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I remember religiously buying issues of Sinclair User, Your Spectrum, Atari User, Page 6, ST Amiga Format throughout the eighties and early nineties. I soon realised with the advent of Alta Vista that I could become my own editor. That's even more true with google and RSS aggregators such as bloglines. I haven't bought a magazine for about 10 years. Now most magazines have more in common with soft-porn than tech reviews.
- CedEx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0@ HMTKSteve
Surf porn while on the toilet? Do you have any idea how hard it is to piss, let alone point down instead of shooting straight out between the seat and the bowl? - andergriff, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1And good riddance to them. The idea that a magazine's editorial content could be completely objective with regard to sensitive stories that might involve the same industries of their advertisers, or the advertiser himself, is ludicrous. It's a corrupt business for the most part.
- dwhitbeck, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Computer mags today are nothing more than trade magazines. They are already paid for by the advertisers, the price the user pays is just added profit.
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