Man Is The Media.
Mygazines is dead – or how not to launch an online publishing service
October 15th, 2008 by Martin
It’s been exiting watching a new online publishing site, Mygazines.com, come out of nowhere and grow like a weed.
I must admit they had things going for them (like a catchy name and reasonable performance overall). It definitely wasn’t a site built overnight.
But it was hard to miss the fact that the Mygazines people were dirty. From the beginning they’d uploaded hundreds (thousands?) of scanned commercial publications, made it possible for users to upload anonymously, and had done everything to avoid legal suits (including a very shady domain registration, hosting on Pirate Bay servers, and no physical address listed anywhere).
Their launch soon spawned an impressive media hype, fueled by copyright owner’s frustration and the (printed) media industry’s obvious resentment. Add the promise of free commercial content to the equation and you have the makings of a dynamite story waiting to blow up.
It did. Apart from the launch itself, notable chapters included the hunt for the owners and a massive collaborative suit by some of the world’s biggest publishers.
Presumably the story ends today: Mygazines is dead. According to a message on their website, financial trouble gave them the final blow:
Due to monetary reasons and the state of the global economy, we unfortunately must close mygazines.com. We simply ran out of funds to support the daily operations.
Scapegoating the global financial situation is of course a poor excuse and obviously that’s not the full story. Starting out with pissing off key stakeholders, namely the content and copyright owners, is not really a good way to build a business (even though Mygazines claimed they did the exact opposite, saying it didn’t make it so).
As much as it frustrated publishers, it thrilled consumers craving free quality magazines. That’s an important lesson as publishers move ahead into the digital age: How should new business models look in the publishing industry of tomorrow (well, today actually, as the digital age very much is here already). Mygazines took a dimly lit path and ended up in facing the same challenges that popular P2P services do (such as this one). And that move proved fatal.
Here’s a screenshot of their current landing page, preserved for the future. R.I.P.
Just in case you’re looking for a legal online publishing service with original content, I suggest you take a peek at this one (note: I’m part of the founding team).
