Online trumps print debuts, or vice versa
With the world living and reacting on Internet time, the mode and timing of publication debuts become strategic decisions with financial and intellectual property implications. I wrote about two different print magazine publications this week and their differing strategies regarding issue debuts in print versus online: Nylon and Wired.
Nylon: MySpace sponsors digital magazine downloading premiere
Wired: Crowds are buzzing and Crowdsourcing: New buzzword?
Nylon magazine is inferring extra value on an online issue debut:
The digital issue…will be available for downloading at the magazine's Web site Wednesday (and) will be identical to the print version, which will not reach newsstands until May 31.
Wired has inferred extra value on its issue debuts in print, rather than online; I wrote about Jeff Howe’s new crowdsourcing discussion last weekend, upon receiving my June Wired print issue, retrieved by snail mail via the USPS, Howe's piece did not appear online, however, until today.
My writing online about Wired stories before they appeared online, illustrates, of course, the near impossibility of completely controlling information distribution through the various media platforms available today. By wondering online if Wired writers were in the process of developing another popular buzzword on the heels of long tail phenom Chris Anderson, I may have sparked buzzword buzz.
My post, "Crowdsourcing: New buzzword?" was in fact reproduced shortly after I posted it, including graphic, at the Website of a company seeking to be a player in the crowdsourcing space: SocialTwister.
Here is Howe's crowdsourcing piece, online.
Which is a better distribution strategy: online or print debuts? Join the conversation: "Talk Back" below to share your thoughts.
UPDATE: TRACK "WIRED CROWDSOURCING: BIRTH (PLANNED?) OF A MEME"