I Have No Idea What I am Doing

I saw an ad for Mine Magazine in Real Simple and went to sign up immediately. It’s so, so close to being brilliant. And yet it’s not. Not because they are lacking in potentially cool articles, but because they don’t personalize it enough and it’s made from regurgitating past issues, the latter of which would be ok if the information was highly tailored to me. But, like a bad date, they don’t ask enough questions about me.

If they really wanted me to feel attended to, they would ask for my feedback on each article and continue tailoring my choices for my future magazines. Pandora does this for music, and Netflix does it for suggested movies in your queue. Why can’t publishers do it for our e-magazines?

Here’s their pitch, which is good: “You can customize your playlist, your wardrobe, your car, AND NOW…your magazine.” And here’s how it works: You pick five titles from the following: Travel + Leisure, Golf, InStyle, Money, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, Time, and Food & Wine. But then you answer “some seemingly random questions” which “seemingly stereotype” the hell out of you in odd ways:

And right there is where they dropped the ball. (That last question makes zero sense. Either one is going to talk your ear off about mankind, but maybe they’re subtly asking if you’re into the DaVinci Code?)

A custom magazine, melding my favorite topics, is a very good idea (it was called Domino, and then it folded). For a major publishing company to offer bits of each of its titles, matched to my personality, is a downright fabulous idea, and one that I would actually pay for. Hear that, falling media giant? I would subscribe!

So, now let’s get into the small print:

1. This is a digital magazine, which you receive 5 copies of, and which is sponsored by the new Lexus 2010 RX, and 2.) “All of the articles contained in MINE previously appeared in Time Inc. or American Express Publishing Corp. publications.”

I currently only subscribe to Real Simple, and I don’t subscribe to those magazines because, well, they’re not all about me. I’m sure there is some tid bit from each that I would be interested in, but I don’t think there’s enough in any of them for me to buy the whole magazine. So what I need Time Inc’s help with is cherry picking articles for me from each of their titles. If they’re going to feed me articles from their archive and not fresh content, the least they can do is make sure I’ll like it. Because I’ve already decided not to read those magazines for a reason.

While I like to think I’m unique, I’ll bet there’s a lot of us with the same education, interests, and income. Articles aimed at 20-somethings who want to spend some money on pretty things must lurk somewhere in each of these titles, there just isn’t enough for me to buy the whole hog. Same goes for other groups: new families, young professionals, the recently divorced, whatever, group us up and make us a Mine Magazine. Grouping us keeps costs down, fine. But that doesn’t get them off the hook for not asking enough questions to begin with. And as a user of Netflix, Pandora, Digg, and other interactive sites, I expect to be able to rate my content and receive suggestions as a result, especially for an online magazine. Everyone else can do it, why can’t our publishers?

My selected titles were Travel + Leisure, InStyle, Money, Food & Wine, and Time. There are guaranteed to be articles in each of these that apply to my type, but I don’t expect to get them based on whether I prefer juggling or celebrity impersonations.

What I’m saying is, make it mine! mine! mine!:

Tags: ideas about new media, ideas about reading, ideas about the future of media

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.