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ShelfMade is a service that allows users to publish their favourite online articles into a personalized magazine. It hasn´t launched yet, but I think it´s a really interesting way of combining new media and old media, and putting the power in the hands of independent publishers. I haven´t seen how the actual process of creating a magazine works, but providing it isn´t to difficult I think there is a lot of aspiring publishers out there that would join ShelfMade. However, one big issue for magazines are distribution. It is time consuming, and expensive. But if the magazine I create through ShelfMade isn´t distributed, no one will read it. And how fun is that?

So my question to Mike Sabat, one of ShelfMades founders who I´ve had some contact with, is if they have given the distribution problem any thoughts, or if they believe people will sort it out for themselves?

December was an extremely busy (work)month for me as I guess you can tell by my single blog post. It looks like 2008 will kick off in the same way as 2007 ended, but hopefully I´ll find time to cover various magazines and their online activities as well as the continuing growth of digital magazines.

Have a happy 2008!

Finally, the mighty hands of Google has opened up the kitchen cabinet and put its fingers in the cookie jar labelled Magazines. Apparently they´ve applied for a patent regarding “Customization of Content and Advertisements in Publications.”

From the application I read:

A method comprising: receiving personalized content from a plurality of content sources, the personalized content being based on user input; receiving a personalized advertisement based on user input; and creating a customized publication including the personalized content and the personalized advertisement.

You can read a lot more thoughts about the patent at TechCrunch and Huomah. While it seems a bit unclear what exactly Google is aiming at with this patent I’m interested in whether or not they will present a software that will make it easier and cheaper for independent magazine publishers to reach out to a bigger audience. Like Blogger or Wordpress did for bloggers. I’m not sure whether this will work with ordinary print magazines but more likely it could be a hit within digital magazines.

Anyway, regarding the quote above, I can’t help to think that it’s partly what idiomag (which I interviewed in my last two posts) is doing. I’m not saying that one of them stole it from the other, I’m saying that great minds sometimes seem to think alike.

I often talk about editing. Online magazines, and magazines that are online, need to focus on linking to other websites content instead of creating their own content. idiomag is an example of this. You don’t create your own content, but guide your readers to other peoples content. Do you think that focusing on being an editor instead of a producer is the right way to go for online publishers?

Yes, I do believe that a lot of value is created in the aggregation stage. Lots of companies have been creating great content for years - and there is undeniable value in that. But the services that enable a mass audience to engage with that content, especially with effective filtering/personalisation, are seeing huge growth at the moment.

When doing this it’s obviously important to validate the content you guide the readers to. How have you solved this problem? How do you validate the content you put in idiomag?

Over the last few months we have been working to minimise any moderation of content. The moderation really is just to check that our technology is working correctly. The actual editorial decision is about which sites distribute content through idiomag. We can track which content is most read, and most highly rated, so this can help us deliver great content in the future.

Do you pick up content from any website, or do you cooperate with different content-producers?

All the articles within idiomag have been republished with agreement from the content owner. This is obviously the only legal, and stable, way to do it!

What are your criterias when choosing what producers to cooperate with?

At the moment we take into account things like quality of writing, frequency of submission, popularity and structure. Expecially at the beginning (since we aggregate text content via RSS), it was important to be able to grab feeds that were well structured, but this is getting less important as our technology improves.

Do you use content from blogs?

Absolutely. We have some great blogs distribued through idiomag.

Right now idiomag has an application in Facebook, do you plan on working with communities in any other way?

Yes. One key trend with content consumption online, is distributed delivery - or “widgetisation”. Users want to get snippets of content where they are, without having to go to a news site (for example). So delivery via a Facebook app really expands the potential audience, and gives the content to readers, when and where they want it. We are working to create a mini-magazine using the newly announced Opensocial APIs as well - which will be delivered to all major social networks. You can already get idiomag on most of the major startpages - and on your blog.

Connecting visitors with each other is getting more and more important. How are you working on this in idiomag?

Well the Facebook integration is the best example of this so far - although the Opensocial integration I just spoke of will enable us to offer this to users outside Facebook as well. By adding the Facebook app, idiomag readers can see what their friends are reading, recommend articles to them, and also browse all the other idiomag readers to find those with similar interests.

You distribute a new magazine each day. Why did you decide that this was the best frequency for idiomag? Do people have enought time to read a new magazine each day?

The flow can be changed easily - but yes, we have set it as a new magazine each day at the moment. It isn’t quite as overwhelming as it sounds, however. We deliver 3-5 new articles each day, and they stay in the magazine for 7 days (or longer if you choose to archive them). So it should suit most readers, whether they want to read a little each day, or more once a week.

Finally, is idiomag indexed by Google?

We’re working on this. But partially, yes.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking around for various Facebook magazines and stumbled upond idiomag. It’s a new sort of digital magazine, and it looks like nothing else I’ve seen on the internet. I was, to put it mildly, very impressed and did an interview with Andrew Davies, one of the co-founders of idiomag. I had a lot of questions and therefore the interiew is split in two. The second part will be published later this week. Instead of me trying to describe idiomag, please read the interview and have a look for yourself at idiomag.com.

Andrew Davies, how would you describe idiomag?

idiomag is a high-quality, digital magazine personalized to each individual user’s interests in music. It keeps them “in the know” about the artists and genres they love, as well as finding new artists that they might like. It includes feature articles, reviews, videos, galleries and interactive elements in an engaging format that users can access whenever and wherever they want it. Users can read the article, play the track, view the video, check for gigs, and go off to buy the mp3 or ticket or share their views with their friends.

We utilise all the knowledge this generates about our users and their interests to deliver the most relevant experience and to target the most compelling advertising.

*What we do*

idiomag is a personalised publishing platform that integrates users, content providers and advertisers: for users, we provide a highly-relevant multimedia magazine; for content providers we provide an efficient mass-distribution system via quality content formats; and we enable advertisers to interact with their audiences through relevant, effective and engaging advertising.

*How we do it*

We’ve developed two fundamental technologies – our automated publishing system which aggregates content via the internet from content partners, drawing in related media for each submission and then transforming the resulting article into a rich-media magazine format; and our personalisation system which matches content to the interests of each reader, and intelligently adapts each readers’ profile of interests as they rate the appeal of the content they view. These technologies enable highly efficient publishing and highly effective advertising to be delivered to precisely targeted audiences. Our advertising revenue is shared with content partners, enabling quality publishers to monetise their content based on its appeal.

When did you start developing idiomag?

The concept was developed over the last few years, but development started properly in June 2006.

What where your visions when you started working on idiomag?

For it to be a single magazine that delivers me everything I want, from a huge variety of sources.

What does idiomag look like in five years time?

I haven’t a clue. It’s the readers’ wants and opinions that will shape that. But I imagine that it wil be delivered in multple formats via multiple interfaces, so that delivery method as well as content type can be personalised. And of course, it will be delivering content about a huge range of subjects - not just music.

Could you identify three reasons why idiomag will succeed?

- Personalisation. There is now an over-abundance of information and people need filters they can trust, so that they don’t spend the entire day looking.
- Relevant and interesting advertising. We are able to deliver advertising that is personalised and interesting to look at. And the context of a glossy magazine lends itself to this. We can deliver full-screen, rich media, targeted advertising - even full microsites within the pages of the magazine. The advertising will not distract from the experience, and it will provide a revenue stream to ensure we can keep developing the concept and adding more content.
- Flexibilty. Already we are tracking user behaviour on the site to learn about and modify the user journey and interface, in order to develop a more useable site. We will continue listening to the readers, in order to create a magazine that is right for them.

How many subscribers do you have today? And how many subscribers do you think you’ll be able to attract?

We have around 4000 at the moment, but it is growing fast. The potential audience for idiomag is huge (especially when we branch out into other content areas - its obviously just a case of letting them know.

Do you have any plans for expanding idiomag to other languages than english?

Yes, absolutely. But not until we can prove the idiomag concept where we have started.

Who are the guys behind idiomag?

Ed is the founder - he developed the concept and has led the design and development of the site. I (Andrew) am the cofounder, and have developed the content partnerships, helped with product direction, and work on the promotion and distribution of idiomag. Both of us graduated from Warwick Business School in recent years.

David is the investor and non-exec Chairman. He has recently retired after founding, building and selling a leading B2B personalisation company called KiQ to Chordiant, a Nasdaq listed company. We also have several other team members who help design, develop and promote the site.

Come back later this week for the second part of my interview with Andrew Davies from idiomag.

Go check out www.idiomag.com. An interview with the creators behind this really interesting digital magazine is coming up here on Wagazi!

Those of you that have followed this blog for a while know that one of my favourite subject is editing, and that I believe that the future of journalists is more about editing than producing. This is hardly an unique or controversial point of view, but still a smile starts growing on my face every time I find others that believe in the same thing:

… if the latest evolution of the Internet, Web 2.0, was about the consumer — meaning user-generated sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube — then Web 3.0 will be about the editor.

Blog Magazine writes about Brijit, an online magazine aggregator that let’s it’s users together with an editorial team rate, and present, print magazine articles. The idea is that Brijits visitors this way will be guided to which magazine articles is worth reading, and which is not.

Now that the web and search has made ALL content from EVERY source easily accessible, many media brands are realizing they can’t just be in the business of creating their own content — they need to bring their readers the ENTIRE universe of content on the web.

Scott Karp on Publish2 highlights several newspapers that are beginning to guide their visitors to other newspapers content.

But in a networked media world, where news consumers have access to EVERY piece of content produced by EVERY news outlet large and small (and with high quality news outlets proliferating on the web), media is undergoing a seismic shift — it’s no longer strictly about producing and distributing your OWN content.

(Once again) Scott Karp about nytimes.com and their third-party content aggregation.

By the way, aggregating other producers content are obviously not a new phenomenon in the blogosphere. Just look at the left sidebar here on Wagazi where the latest posts from Cyberjournalist.net, Magazine Rack and Editors Weblog - New Media are presented on a regular basis.

(It just struck me that I might use the term editing in a wrong way. If you have a better term for this, please let me know)

Mochila calls itself “the media marketplace” which seems to be quite spot on. Basically they sell articles, photos, audios and video from more than 1 000 media producers. Is this the future for freelance writers/photographers/producers? Is this the future for online publishers?

(via the always interesting Springwise newsletter)

Do you want to increase your sales? Put Kate Moss on the cover. And put some blonde hair on the top of her head. That should do it. At least if your magazine resides in the Kate Moss crazy country a.k.a U.K.

According to FemaleFirst, Kate Moss appearance on the latest issue of i-D has resulted in a 56 % sales increase of the magazine in the Borders bookshops. In the Borders bookshop store on Oxford street, the increase in sales for i-D’s november issue is as big as 900 %!

Sometimes, creativity comes in small packages. Just about the size of a barcode. Like in the latest issues of UK Esquire. MagCulture has the pictures, go have and look and get inspired.