Yet Another Print Publication Gone Digital

Last April, Time Inc. announced that it would be merging the website for Teen People magazine with People magazines website, People.com. The news came just 6 months after Teen People announced it would be discontinuing its print version. The number of readers visiting the online version of Teen People magazine has significantly declined since March of 2006. Teen People could no longer sustain itself as an attractive publication for advertisers to invest their money. Readers who try to locate the magazine will be relocated to People.com, which will feature all of its normal content in addition to Teen People branded stories.

However, Teen People is not the only magazine that has suffered this fate. Elle Girl, a special interest publication of Elle magazine, also folded its print edition in July of last year. Since then the magazine has focused more on the website making it the foundation on which to rebuild the Elle Girl brand. Plans to completely revise the site and expand the web magazines' content are efforts to appeal to young women differently thus avoiding economic and social failure. The major revision of Elle Girl magazine will hopefully prevent it from having to further downsize like so many other print publications.

Some of the factors that have affected magazines readership’s are virtual social networks such as Myspace, or sites like YouTube. Many teens prefer to spend their online time connecting with friends through social networks such as Facebook and Myspace or downloading multimedia content. Much of the content that is of interest to young women, such as makeup tips or instructions on how to achieve certain hairstyles is readily accessible on sites like YouTube. Now young fashionistas can watch instructional videos and achieve the same if not better results, without having to read editorial content. In a society with an increasingly short attention span multimedia often have more impact on an audience than words on a page. With online shopping convenience, young women can browse a designer’s entire collection with a few clicks of a mouse; bypassing the need to seek out certain magazines just to get a peek at the seasons newest looks.

Fashion magazines are not the only publications under pressure from a lack of ad revenue. Many print publications are being forced to downsize their operation and evolve in order to meet their readers constantly changing interests. The Internet has dramatically changed the way people conduct business, get information, purchase goods and it apparently will also change how magazines target their readers. It already has.