Magazines

Maghound Vs. Brijit: Making Print Media Safe For The Web

By Neal on October 29, 2007 12:05 PM

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The million dollar question: How to make money off of magazines in the post-web era. With mag publishers constantly facing financial troubles, everyone’s looking for a way to turn their brands into bona-fide moneymakers.

We have two contestants in the race: Maghound and Brijit.

  • Maghound: A new Time Inc. service that promotes itself as a “magazine version of Netflix.” Subscribers pay a monthly fee for three magazine subscriptions, with the ability to swap magazines at will or cancel entirely at any point.

    Problems: Maghound has been in development at Time Inc. for four years already. Four years. Not to mention that, according to Time Inc.’s promotional materials, almost 20% of the magazines on their roster will be priced at a premium above the standard fee. 20% is a lot — will customers still be as interested if it costs more to get, say, Vogue or Harper’s? But thats right — Time Inc. still refuses to disclose which non-Time properties will be available through the service.

  • Brijit: This new startup creates 100-word abstracts of magazine articles and aggregates them. Founder Jeremy Brosowsky has attracted nearly $1 million in venture capital and former Time EIC Norman Pearlstine is an investor. Think of it as a Digg or Reddit for print media.

    Problems: It’s a Digg for print media. Got it. What differentiates itself from Digg? Absolutely nothing. That’s bad. Equally bad is the print-heavy layout which overwhelms the site’s advertising. Article descriptions are hidden in subpages; there’s no way to find out the subject of an article from the homepage.

    May the best magazine-oriented web startup win.

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