All-digital Magazine Gets Re-VIV-ed
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Steve Smith

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The ambitious experiment in all-digital magazine publishing VIV relaunched its home site last week and plans to update the design of its digital issue later ths week and launch an iPhone version in mid-September. The downloadable digital magazine launched over a year ago with a number of service magazine vets at the helm, including EIC Anne Russell. The project was funded by Fiji Water founder David Gilmour, whose company ended up purchasing VIV’s technology provider, Zinio. VIVmag now clams 250,000 readers of its bi-monthly issues. The project leverages the depth and lushness of the digi-mag format, with lengthy issues that sport multimedia ads and copy as well as extensive sections covering the “7 pillars” of a woman’s life: beauty, fitness, style, healthy eating, travel wellness and awareness.

The plan for the new Web site is to support the digi-mag with exclusive content and community/media sharing capabilities. The new VIV will include enhanced video content and more opportunities for interactivity. Expect to see the re-done downloadable on Sept. 1.

The iPhone extension is a particularly interesting offshoot of the plan. As we explored in last week’s issue of min, at least one iPhone magazine has been announced (PMc) and sources tell us more are coming. For the digital magazine format, the iPhone makes sense. When companies like Zinio launched their digital magazine models years ago, one of the target devices was the then-new Tablet PC. The form factor and stylus interactivity of the Tablet seemed to map well against the large page size and format of the digitized page. Some early Tablets actually came with Zinio pre-loaded, in fact. The smart phone, specifically the iPhone is in some ways a miniaturized version of the Tablet PC, since it shares certain tactile involvement and the ability to fill the screen with a lush layout. Zinio, Texterity and others have launched Web-based iPhone applications of their digi-mag readers. With the opening of the new iPhone App Store, we are bound to see downloadable magazines that mimic some of the attributes of the classic digi-mag as well. Perhaps, in the end, the smartphone was the best target for the digital magazine model all along.

If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com

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COMMENTS

1.

250,000.. that's a lot of clams.

Posted by Ken on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 05:59 PM

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