idiomag

I just came across a great article by Olivia Hemmings, a post-graduate at Cardiff University. Entitled “Mags online: It’s getting personal“, Olivia explains that the public has a short attention span online and yet is demanding ever more quality content. She then summarises the movement towards personalised online publishing by the large publishing houses, in order to try and meet this demand.

The article contrasts what idiomag is doing with what IPC Media is trying to build into NME: myNME, a feature for registered users of NME.com, asks users for their favourite bands and then fills the myNME page with relevant content. The ‘personalisation’ system seems to be quite simple, just displaying the most recent articles that include the user’s favourite bands name as a keyword. Therefore it doesn’t contain the learning ability of idiomag, or the discovery aspect (where content is suggested based on specific genre interests rather than just band names). However, it certainly is a great step in the right direction.

The article contains a good quote about idiomag from Kim Hollamby, head of electronic media at IPC Media:

“I like the idea (of Idio); IPC is building this technology at the moment, although there’s no business plan for it yet. Magazines work because they have a focus, but I’m aware that our readers have mixed interests. In essence I think this concept could take over but ultimately that will be dictated by the user.”

Although I am admittedly biased, I believe that the true innovation in this area will have to come from startups like idiomag - simply because we don’t have to worry about continuing to please millions of existing readers, whilst coordinating the integrated development of a myriad of leading national titles. In the same way that TV production/distribution companies stood seemingly powerless whilst YouTube advanced into their domain, many digital publishing startups have been moving into the glossy magazine domain - the best of which are innovating in at least one area, whether it be personalisation, community, interactivity or media blend.