The Future of Magazines

Being an avid Sports Illustrated reader and long time subscriber, I was recently asked to subscribe to SI's iPad application. Though I don't have an iPad, yet, I still wanted to check it out. After reading the consumer reports and viewing countless tutorials such as the one above, I am quite impressed at its potential, reader interactions and user friendly simplicities.

Now to be honest, I have owned enough video games and seen enough movie previews to know that preview will never match up to the real thing (if only I would have had this knowledge before seeing Kazaam) however, this presentation of Sport Illustrated's application on YouTube has to be the exception.

This tutorial was easy to follow.  It showed different features associated with its application very well and after viewing this tutorial, I viewed a few issues via the iPad and am a firm believer that future magazine applications like this will be huge hits with subscribers. Not only is there limitless potentials in mixing videos with text and countless other mediums but advertisements within magazines are multi-dimensional as well. For instance, Milk had an add with a basketball player, whom shall remain nameless, and on the iPad application you can click on the ad and view the actual shoot behind the scenes and interviews with producers.

What used to be a simple magazine with text and pictures has now become an interactive medium loaded with a digital library of photos and videos. Subscribers are able to organize the contents and pages of the magazine accordingly and can basically personalize the entire format.

Newspapers and magazines have been trying to transition to the Internet for years now but after seeing the applications on the iPad and their potential, it looks like advertising needs to make a sharp turn in this direction. Applications are the new thing and if I were the head of a magazine, I would be talking with my creative department and starting up its iPad application ASAP!