The Time, Inc. Hulu Story…

Earlier this week, a B2B journalist asked me for my take on the "Hulu for magazines" story. My reaction (and his coverage of the event) never appeared, perhaps due to the Questex bankruptcy and Conde closings taking up his time. However, my response was this:

I agree with all of the hurdles pointed out in the article. However, I’d add at least two of my own:

"The new company, which will operate independently from the publishers that invest in it, will create a digital storefront where consumers can purchase and manage their subscriptions that can be delivered to any device."

Simply put, that ain’t easy. We know, because that’s what we’re doing at Nxtbook: allowing publishers to send us a single PDF that will deliver content to PC’s, e-readers, iPhones, BlackBerrys, etc… We’ve learned along the way that formatting for each of these devices – particularly for photo-heavy magazine content – requires a custom service-heavy solution unique for each device. This doesn’t mean it won’t happen, as we think the future depends on it, as consumers move their attention to all of these devices, only that it’s not going to be handled with the click of a mouse.

Second, and not addressed in the article, is the continued belief from some companies – particularly Time, Inc., that consumers are so interested in "managing" subscriptions to something that only affects their life one day out of the month. We’ve seen a similar level of naval-gazing with products like Maghound.

The day I get Runner’s World is my favorite day of the month, but I just don’t think about it the other 29 days. The idea that people want to manage their subscriptions is counter-intuitive. People don’t want to manage content: they want to consume content.

We see things a little differently. We believe that consumers will sign up for your magazine, but there’s no way to know what device they’ll be on the day you publish your issue. That’s the publisher’s problem – not the consumers problem. So we see publishers sending out a single link to readers, which will render the proper version of the publication, depending on where they are when that link comes out. It’s an important difference between solutions that require active "management" and solutions that find the consumer.