NYC – Times Square: Condé Nast Building and One Times Square (Photo credit: wallyg)

Using audience and brand research data, the Conde Nast publication company is launching a new digital marketing tool to connect its advertisers with the readers who are most influential in their interests. After analyzing over 55 million subscribers, the company has created ten audience categories or “catalysts” including one of top buyers of beauty products, one of high volume buyers of beauty products, one of moms who prefer brand names, one of eclectic buyers, and one of luxury fashion buyers.

Media Post

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Advance Publications bought NY-based Reddit for less than $5 million in 2006. Now its estimated value is upwards of $240 million. Bob Sauerberg, president of Advance’s Conde Nast magazine division, said that they basically left the startup alone so they wouldn’t screw it up.

Forbes recently reported that Reddit is a thrifty company and needs only a smattering of ad revenue to cover expenses. Aaron Magness, marketing vice president at Coastal.com, says to Forbes Reddit’s seedier posts don’t bother his company, which sells eyewear online. They advertise on the site’s front page, which doesn’t have questionable content. As long as they stay away from the more offensive areas, Magness says they’re safe.

Forbes

Condé Nast

The investment in Flite is one of several deals Condé Nast has made recently. The company has also invested in Trigger Media, which helps create digital media companies and products, and Moda Operandi, a fashion Web site. In April, the company acquired ZipList, a digital and mobile shopping list and recipe service.

Media Decoder

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As of 2011, Condé Nast not only publishes magazines but also has a digital media incubator: Interactive Product Group (iPG). The group has developed such apps as Idea Flight and Santa’s Hideout, and now its latest release and first game, Fashion Hazard. The arcade-style game lets players choose a model avatar and then guide her down a 3-D runway rife with coins and mini-challenges. Senior director of iPG, Juliana Stock, told Adweek that the game is meant to be a girly version of such “endless runner” games as Temple Run. Everything for Fashion Hazard was developed in-house and promoted in partnership with the Me Girl app series as well as other relevent Condé websites.

Adweek

The New Yorker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The New Yorker released their app for the iPhone today, according to All Things D. The app presents all of the same content as the New Yorker iPad app, the magazine and some digital extras through Apple’s Newsstand. Access for print subscribers is free, but it is possible to purchase a digital only subscription and to buy individual issues. This week’s edition is available for free so that users can try out the app for themselves.

This iPhone app marks a different direction for Conde Nast, which has tried to limit all of its digital content to iPads and other tablets. Additionally, Conde Nast and Adobe, who created the publishers app platform, have figured out how to handle “paginated HTML,” meaning the app can now handle text as text instead of as a large image file. For example, this week’s edition is about 23 megabytes, while the iPad versions have been more than 100MB each. The New Yorker will now use this same tech to slim down the iPad version. Additionally, for fun, the New Yorker had Lena Dunham, from “Girls” and Mad Men’s Jon Hamm make a video announcing the iPhone launch.

All Things D

The New Yorker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The New Yorker seems as though it is lagging behind other competitors in terms of adapting to the Internet. According to Buzzfeed, the magazine has been hindered by Conde Nast‘s lack of resources and contractual writer’s agreements, and a recent resignation of Jonah Lehrer ended up worsening the issues, not improving them. A former staffer blamed the current editor, David Remnick, for the magazine’s failures to integrate, saying that he focused on a book project at the wrong time. Whomever is to blame, the outcome has been a website that features slow-to-update blogs, bulky pdfs, and a homepage that has just recently started staying recent to daily news.

The site started out as a strong web presence, but soon became out of date when in 2008 Conde Nast executives decided to keep all of the site’s content behind a pay wall during the election. After election day, Remnick hired Politico’s Avi Zenilman as a blogger, but this didn’t compare to improvements other sites were making. Jason Kottke, a blogger who had been interviewed as a potential editor of newyorker.com, said about the site, “I think it’s good but not great… I understand that there are a lot of competing interests at the magazine (editorial, technical, political bureaucratic, legal, etc.) but for a reader who just wants to pay to read the magazine’s fantastic material in a reasonable format, it can be a frustrating experience.”

Buzzfeed

The New Yorker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Conde Nast-owned publication, The New Yorker, will add Andy Borowitz’s Borowitz Report to its network of blogs. Borowitz, satirist and comedian, boasts about 275,000 Twitter followers and has been a frequent contributor to the “Shouts and Murmurs” section of the magazine. According to Mashable, the comic announced the move with some of his usual humor, writing, “Longtime Borowitz Report readers might ask: how will moving to The New Yorker, known for its excruciating fact-checking, change The Borowitz Report, which is composed entirely of lies? The answer: not at all. The Borowitz Report will be as inaccurate as always, and if I ever write something that turns out to be true you have my deepest apology and my promise that it won’t happen again.”

Borowtiz ended the announcement with a genuine dedication to his mother, who passed away this month at the age of 83 and loved reading The New Yorker.

Mashable

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This Thursday, the Huffington Post‘s new iPad publication will be available through the Apple Store. The publication is called Huffington. and will be available free for the first month and then .99 cents an issue, $1.99 a month, or $19.99 a year, according to Capital New York. An additional free month will be accessible to users who provide their zip code and email addresses.

Tim O’Brien, HuffPost executive editor, gave reporters a preview of the app and told Capital  that, “We thought long and hard about it, and in our view, we felt that this is a highly stylized, curated experience. We feel it’s a premium product and it deserves to carry a price with it in order to access all the value we’re giving people.” The app was originally slotted to be released for free and include re-purposed stories from the Huffington Post, but the concept evolved to include exclusive content that requires payment. Apple will take a 30% cut of the publication’s sales.

Tomorrow’s edition is a preview issue and will include some content that appears on the website, but the first official issue will be released the following week and feature writing from Howard Fineman and Peter Goodman. Each individual story will have a URL so that it can be shared online. The staff for publications includes 24 full-time employees, including designers and editors.

The tablet version will also include embeddable video, live commenting, and interactive graphics. The new issues will be available every Friday.

Capital New York

The New Yorker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The New Yorker will soon be available for the iPhone, which will be the first magazine iPhone app released by Condé Nast and the first to use Adobe’s new software. Additionally, Meredith Corp announced that it will be using the same Adobe software to create apps for magazines, such as Parents and Better Homes and Gardens.

According to The New York Post, executives at Condé Nast are not releasing concrete details about the app just yet, though some have speculated that it may debut by September, though the magazine’s iPad app has brought about  100,000 subscriptions. The iPhone app, like the iPad app, will require payment by consumers, as app-generated revenueis thought by many magazine executives as a supplement to the physical subscriptions.

Pamela McCarthy, Deputy Editor at The New Yorker, told the Post that, “There is reason to think that everything we offer on the iPad will also be offered on the iPhone. We want to be everywhere our readers want to find us.”

The New York Post

Fashion Networks International

Gina Sanders, president and CEO of FFM, said to WWD, “this acquisition furthers our mission to deliver an insider perspective to the global fashion community, while offering exciting new functionality and meaningful scale.”

One of the key fashion bloggers on FNI  is Bryan Grey Yambao, who is better known by the handle Bryanboy.  According to WWD, Bryanboy  has more than 252,000 followers on Twitter and is rumored to become a judge on “America’s Next Top Model.”

Women’s Wear Daily

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Apple gave publishing partners no formal warning that it was going to double the resolution on its latest iPad, engendering a rat-race to get existing apps up to spec. Magazines are still catching up with upgrades of their digital editions, but Condé Nast announced this week that all of its magazine digital editions for iPad are now optimized for the new retina displays, according to MinOnline.

Optimizing higher resolution pages to save space is a continuous challenge to designers. Some of the files in these upgraded apps can be converted to PDF to lower the overhead. In many cases, though, the magazines carry larger multimedia experiences that Condé Nast wants to preserve for readers to experience both online or offline so they need to be embedded with the initial download, MinOnline notes.

The installed base of new iPad owners is small compared to the full market, however. In February Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that 55 million iPads of the first two generations had been sold. On the first weekend of its March launch, Apple declared the new iPad had already sold 3 million units, MinOnline details.

MinOnline

Yesterday publisher Condé Nast announced that it bought startup ZipList, a free grocery list and recipe box app, for an undisclosed amount.  The app allows users to find dishes they like on various food sites and store them in ZipList’s digital recipe box.

In a statement issued by Condé Nast, Bob Sauerberg, president, said, “our goal is to build ZipList as an independent company while collaborating with our food brands to integrate its core technology, and to create partnerships that allow other companies to do the same.”

ZipList serves about 6,500 food sites and blogs.

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Earlier this week Conde Nast released updates for their apps that cater to the higher resolution on the new iPad, namely with their publications such as GQ, Wired, Vogue and Conde Nast Traveler. These updates will first be seen on the April editions of the magazines and offer a much more crisp visual quality.

According to Talking New Media, the move has been met with mixed reactions. Some critics are upset that the new editions will be considerably larger files, effectively taking up more space and possibly calling for longer download times.

Talking New Media

magazine vogue Español: logo de la revista Vogue (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Vogue has announced that their monthly publication is now available digitally on the Nook, Nook Color, Kindle Fire and iPad.  The publication’s new digital presence coincides with the release of the April edition featuring Jennifer Lopez.  Additionally, Vogue is offering a free trial version to promote the digital launch on each platform.

Subscription to the digital version of the publication is $19.99, half off the cover price.

FishbowlNY

ars technica (Photo credit: insidetwit)

As the tech-world continues to grow, Conde Nast is prepping its publication, Ars Technica, for some major changes. Most notably, they are hiring an entire advertising staff to help with new exposure, while they will also be hiring more editorial staffers to help with the site’s redesign (set to launch in May), and expand coverage of their topics. Previously, Ars’ sales had been handled by Wired’s staff.

The site sees an average of 8 million unique visitors a month, four out of every five readers visit the site daily, and its $5 Kindle e-book has sold over 15,000 copies.

AdWeek

NYC - Times Square: Condé Nast Building (Photo credit: wallyg)

This week, NY magazine publisher Conde Nast launched a new corporate website allows users to customize the homepage. Additionally, all of its titles now are equipped with a media kit, digital download and social media links; the heritage section has an interactive timeline, with photos and videos from the last 100 or so years, plus according to FishbowlNY, the career section is now larger than it was before.

To visit the new site, click here.

FishbowlNY

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With the holiday season now underway, Conde Nast recently launched “Santa’s Hideout.” The website allows children to make a personal wish list that is set up by their parents, who have the ability to divvy the list up  for “Santa’s eyes only” and for family and friends, according to Reuters. The website uses Amazon’s public API, which handles the e-commerce duties of shipping items on the list. The website is the second launched from Conde Nast’s research and development group incubator.

“The group is allowed to run in any direction,” Drew Schutte, chief integration officer at Conde Nast, told Reuters. “You never know how one technology will impact the rest of the company,” he added.

Reuters

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This year, the WIRED store, a yearly venue sponsored by the Conde Nast magazine featuring the latest holiday gadgets, art installations and special events is located right on 42nd St and Broadway; it started November 18th and will continue until December 24th. The 10,000 square foot gallery is interactive for shoppers and displays over 200 new products.

Some of those products and art installations include: a 24-carat gold plated Atari gaming console, an iTree docking station for iPhone and iPod, made from a hollow tree trunk, and two custom Lego sculptures by Nathan Sawaya (the “Brick Artist”). In addition, the events held will be: GeekDad Family Day, Norman Reedus of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” photo exhibit, Game Day, Music Spotlight Series, and Maker Demo Days.

MarketWatch

Moda Operandi

“We want to continue to build our relationships with major brands,” Aslaug Magnusdottir, a former Gilt Groupe executive who founded Moda Operandi with Lauren Santo Domingo, a contributing editor at Vogue, who is the creative director of the site, told the Times. “We plan to increase the number of trunk shows we will show on the site, with more ready-to-wear, accessories and jewelry,” Magnusdottir added.

Moda Operandi has been rapidly expanding, particularly so since September, when Condé Nast invested in the company, a move that coincided with its deal with Vogue to link some of its sales to runway images on Vogue.com, according to the Times. An increasing number of designers are making their collections available there, which will pose a great threat to stores like Bergdorf and Barneys, the Times notes. 

The New York Times

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NY-based magazine publisher Hearst says it now has more than 300,000 paid digital downloads each month, spread out among sales from Apple‘s App Store, Barnes & Noble‘s Nook and the Zinio digital reader platform. According to Peter Kafka in All Things D, the company is set to begin selling magazines via Amazon‘s upcoming tablet Kindle Fire.

Unlike it’s peers, Hearst doesn’t offer print/digital bundles, however some of those downloads come from yearly digital subscriptions. NY-based Conde Nast, says its monthly digital circulation is now 500,000, with 225,000 of those digital only subscribers. The rest are free downloads tied to a print version.

All Things D

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Advance Publications will look to the digital and tech industries for its future endeavors, an interesting excursion from the company that made billions from print magazines and newspapers, according to the New York Post. Its $500 million investment, via preferred stock in the cable channel Discovery Holdings, has provided Advance with stakes in a range of outlets, from magazines to online gaming; since ex Yahoo!’s M&A boss Andrew Siegel was hired by Advance Publications, stock has been galvanizing.

“We’re looking to find new ways to leverage the Condé Nast brand in video, e-commerce and consumer events,” Sauerberg told the NY Post.

Advance ventures are exceeding the traditional tactic, however, revealing it to be a secondary investor in Boston-based social video analytics firm Visible Measures. According to the NY Post, the Condé Nast unit of Advance is expected to announce that it has taken a major stake in Moda Operandi.

“We’re looking at the way commerce is changing,” Siegel said to the NY Post. “We’re making investments on how technology is changing advertising and how consumer habits are changing.”

New York Post

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Condé Nast is using a new online module that nudges readers to view content from its other sites, according to the Media Decoder. Condé Nast Social Sidekick allows readers to see what others have liked or tweeted from W, Style.com, Glamour, Teen Vogue and Lucky. The module also provides an advertising platform for Gucci, who will use it to promote content from its Facebook page, Twitter feed and some original video content.

Media Decoder reports that Gucci can also see the click-through rates for articles and can easily add or remove content as needed.

Media Decoder (NYTimes.com)

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Late last week, Fox News took aim at NY-based media news/gossip blog Gawker, claiming both online and on “Fox & Friends” that Gawker’s site traffic is down by 75%.  The site first appeared online taking number the one spot on a Fox News web listicle titled “Formerly Popular Sites that are Dead or Dying,” and according to On Media, “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy on Friday morning “repeated the traffic drop and said Gawker was once “mildly popular” in an interview with Breitbart.tv editor Larry O’Connor.”

Gawker writer John Cook claims the reason why Fox is taking aim at the site is because of a story he is working on about a Fox News personality that is set to appear on Gawker sometime this week. In the recent past, Cook has written a number of less-that-flattering stories about Fox News President Roger Ailes.

[Update:  As promised, Gawker has posted its story from Cook about a Fox News personality.  The story is about Bill O'Reilly.]

On Media (Politico.com)

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NY magazine publishers have been betting heavily on the tablet platform, aggressively pushing the highly modern digital medium. Hearst and Conde Nast had struck deals similar to GQ and Vanity Fair with Apple, allowing customers to subscribe through the iTunes store. Shortly after, Time announced that it would release tablet versions of the rest of its entire 21 publications, in addition to Sports Illustrated, Time, Fortune, and People.

However, revenue for iPad apps has not yet materialized. While subscription numbers are growing, they still remain small. According to The Wrap, Conde Nast has only reported 242,000 digital customers in the 6 weeks since releasing iPad subscriptions, making up only 1.3% of its entire print circulation. Conde Nast says that the move to tablets is still nascent, but will become vital in the company’s progression.

The Wrap

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Mathew Ingram of GigaOm recently profiled David Weinberger‘s book, The Cluetrain Manifesto, which proposes that clues to the future of news and journalism can be found in the link-sharing site, Reddit.  Owned by NY publisher Condé Nast, the site can be viewed as a form of community or “crowd-powered” journalism, according to Ingram and Weinberger.

Reddit’s new features, including the “Today I Learned” and “I Am A…Ask Me Anything” (IAMA) series, have expanded the site beyond link sharing.  “Today I Learned” allows Reddit users to post interesting facts, which are then fact-checked by the community.  Similar to question site Quora, the IAMA series functions like a crowd-based interview with a user posting a description of themselves, allowing the Reddit community to ask questions, all of which are moderated by Reddit administrators.

GigaOm

Previous:

>NY Has Most Reddit Addicts

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Last Saturday, the Twitter handle @condeelevator came to life. It’s an anonymous Twitter account chronicling comments allegedly overhead in the Conde Nast building elevator in NY. The account has already gained 50,000+ followers and has “incited a massive witch hunt as outlets race to unveil the author.”

According to The Daily Beast, it seems that the rogue tweeter works at either GQ or Teen Vogue. “The tweets include catty comments about calories, name-drop about Gucci – and convey a universal fear of Anna Wintour.”

[Update - It seems that not long after this post went up yesterday, @condeelevator tweeted its last tweet]

The Daily Beast

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Maybe success on the iPad doesn’t rely on stylish, interactive features – Condé Nast has revealed their highest-selling iPad app is The New Yorker, which focuses on presenting its articles in a clean and readable format. Many are surprised that The New Yorker has had more success than Condé Nast’s more technologically stimulating apps, directed to a younger demographic, like Wired.  The magazine has slowly begun shifting resources to web, by hiring their first web news editor only nine months ago and implementing an online paywall, in an effort to shift to a business model which relies on revenue from consumers.

The magazine’s deputy editor Pamela Maffei McCarthy told The New York Times that creating an app focused on reading was their priority.  “There are some bells and whistles, but we’re very careful about that.  We think about whether or not they add any value.  And if they don’t out the window they go,” she said.

In related news, Conde Nast announced that since introducing its magazines through Apple’s subscription service, the company has garnered 242,000 digital customers in a six week period. Leading the way of all its digital publications has been The New Yorker.

The New York Times

FishbowlNY

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>New Yorker Covers Don’t Make the iPad Cut

Media Decoder (NYTimes.com)

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Condé Nast seemed to have more trouble than most transitioning to the Internet, finding it principles counter to its culture of exclusivity, according to a recent profile in the New York Observer.  Their individual titles slowly made their way onto the Internet, but were not as successful as the company hoped.  With the creation of tablets, especially the iPad, the company saw another chance at breaking into the digital realm, and executive editor of digital magazine development Scott Dadich, would be the one to lead them.

Dadich attempted to make the tablet versions replicas of the print magazine, giving the responsibility to the existing art designers to create both the print and tablet designs.  Many, like former New York Times online design director Khoi Vinh, disproved of Dadich’s methods, calling it, “a fundamental misunderstanding of the way design works.”  Several employees have left, overwhelmed by their extra responsibilities, but the company’s magazines have ultimately seen success in the tablet market.  Dadich was praised as Condé Nast’s digital savior, though skeptics of his methods still remain.

The New York Observer

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The NY-based, Conde Nast owned web community site, Reddit reported a standoff live on the web between New Jersey police and a man who reportedly shot another man with a rifle. A “Redditor,” with the username Ellinika, reported to the site as she was held up in her apartment only 50 feet away from the man with the rifle, according to CNET.

Ellinika, whose real name is Stephanie, was also emailing The Trentonian about the live event.

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