More on SL Biz Mag: PDF vs. Web Smackdown
I just had the chance to chat a bit with SL residents Dalian Hansen and Hunter Glass, the driving forces behind the SL Business Magazine I blogged about just now. It sounds like the pair have their hands full, but they also sound like capable hands.
Hunter, an American defense contractor based in Afghanistan, is acting as publisher for the venture, while Dalian, a creative director and photographer based in Manchuria, China, is the brains behind the scenes. The pair have hired Chloe Stanwell as director of ad sales, Faiyth Newell as Managing Editor and Charisma Toricellli as copy editor. While they declined to name early contributors, the first issue will weigh in at a whopping 30 pages or more, according to Dalian. Layout for the first issue is still being worked out.
“We will have a core group of contributors, and a growing pool of professional freelance writers,” Dalian said. “SL does not need another news or current events publication, so we are really focusing on the high-value content.”
The mag will be available for free in-world, distrubuted over the InfoNet system with weekly notecard supplements, and as a downloadable PDF on the Web. “There will even be a print version for sale in RL,” Dalian said, “but at the cost it is easier to download the PDF and print yourself.” Why no presence that’s readable on the Web itself? “We are not a blog, but a hybrid RL/SL publication,” Dalian explains. Hunter agrees: “It fits the needs of the average user.”
Certainly, you can achieve a higher level of design via PDF. But I’m not sure the trade-offs are worth it in most cases. As Celebrity Trollop pointed out in the previous post’s comments thread, a PDF was the only choice for Second Style magazine. Makes perfect sense for a fashion publication. But I’m not sure a business publication wouldn’t be better served by a Web-readable presence.
What you lose with a PDF are most of the things that make the Web such a powerful medium:
–PDF’s force readers to download and consume one big chunk of content. But consumer trends are moving strongly in the opposite direction. Album sales are way down in recent years and 99 cent downloads are way up. Magazine newsstand sales are at their lowest level since 1970. (I’m largely quoting a piece by Chris Anderson in July’s Wired magazine here, btw.) Even The Escapist, which has been kind enough to let me write for them quite a bit in the past, has had to move away from its PDF-like Web format and toward a more text-based format because of the ways readers have been consuming their content.
–PDF’s aren’t linkable. Yes, you can point to the site. But you can’t link to a PDF article, and you can’t lift text to quote from it in a blog post. The lack of a Web-readable presence means you miss out on the vast social power of the Web, where many people discover new content via other people’s links. This is one of the main things that drives content-consumption on the Web, if not the main thing.
–Business information moves quickly; PDFs move slowly. When I worked at Reuters writing business headlines and stories that went directly to trading floors around the world, seconds were of the essence. Millions of dollars (or marks or yen or pounds) could be made or lost between the time we got our headline on the wire and the time the competition got theirs out, seconds later. Consistently being first with the headlines meant that traders could rely on us, not the competition. The same applies to business in the virtual world. Whoever has the information first has the advantage.
All that said, much depends on the focus. If SLBM really is stongly focused on branding, a monthly format could work, and a PDF may not suffer from some of the disadvantages I’ve outlined above. Above all, quality of content will probably do more to determine readership than anything else. To judge that, we’ll have to wait for the first issue (and then wait for successive issues to see if it’s sustainable). I’m all for more media cropping up in Second Life, though, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what Dalian and Hunter turn out. If it’s good, useful content, it should be a great success regardless of the format.
Feeds
Hm, I just can add to that in that I quite dislike a PDF distribution. I actually would read the Metaverse Messanger more often if
a) it would come directly into my news aggregator (well, you might do enclosures)
b) reading a PDF would be less annoying on a screen.
With the MM there might be the problem of a too small fontsize in general which means that I need to zoom and pan around depening on resolution.
I would actually also add that you cannot comment on the articles via PDF and aren’t even old media companies like newspapers going into a more web-centric direction by being blog like and allowing comments, trackbacks etc.? Networking is the key IMHO.
Ha, you beat me to it, Mark. I was going to comment on the previous entry regarding yet another PDF periodical. Granted PDFs are useful for certain things (converted paper forms for instance) but for me the fact that so many SL perdiodicals are being distributed via PDF is just a sign of amatuer publishing. The irony that SL is in so many respects on the cutting edge, while PDF distribution is very last century. There are certain design mags out there that use PDF, but that’s primarily b/c they are *design* perdiodicals and they cost $.
The real reasons I think PDFs are being used are:
1. Advertising space can be sold on a column inch basis. This ad revenue system is easier to manage for those who aren’t Web-savvy or even familiar with how Web advertising works.
2. Constructing a monthly periodical in Quark/Indesign is arguably easier than doing the same on the Web. Note, I said constructing not designing.
From above: “We are not a blog, but a hybrid RL/SL publication,” Dalian explains. Hunter agrees: “It fits the needs of the average user.”
Say what? Seems to me this (undefined) average user might be better served by a Web site that requires nothing but a browser, as opposed to a PDF plugin and Adobe Reader. Further, most major daily, weekly, and monthly publications have a Web site — the majority of them with the same content found in their paper counterpart. You mention some of the benefits of a Web presence above so I won’t repeat them. Suffice to say that a Web periodical with ‘high quality’ content will, in the case of SL, beat a PDF periodical in both revenue and readership. And, of course, once Mozilla-on-a-prim arrives, in-world distribution becomes a snap.
well, if the HTML-on-a-prim would support PDF plugins… ;-)
“HTML-on-a-prim would support PDF plugins”
Hehe, I won’t hold my breath on that one, Tao!
How likely is a Second Life resident to cut out a newspaper clipping from a local paper and snail mail it to another resident? The answer is zero. If any of these magazines have any intention of understanding their audience they should make their publications available as RSS/blog format articles and PDF/print.
PDF is a good format for archiving paper images, graphic design proofs, pre-press and digitally signing legal documents.
It makes for a lousy data/communication format for the reasons you outlined. Its simply not a good format for indexing, relating to, or managing information.
On a somewhat related note, I find it horrible that Adobe filed suit against Microsoft for putting a PDF viewer in the new version of Windows. Mac OS X has always had a PDF viewer/creator built and there was never a lawsuit against Apple. It seems Adobe only sees value in their PDF format when a big software distributor like Microsoft wants to give away software based on open standard they happened to author.
These magazines REALLY need to dump pdf. I’d even rather read their publications inworld, flipping a ThinC book by Toneless Tomba, where every page has to be a texture on a prim set up in PhotoShop with picture and text, than read a PDF. Yes, I would.
A PDF is annoying, laggy, in your face, unclippable, unlinkable, and just a general pain in the ass as Adobe constantly gets in your face asking if you want to update, etc.
Also, I’m not getting where you find that these pubs sell column inches. I think they sell by the size of the jpeg or photo no? I just wish in general publications and advertising in SL would be easier!
I wonder if, even having a PDF, they could also start a blog or website, even a free tripod, that has the main sort of “long-shelf-life” articles. Because the other problem with PDFs is finding the back issues, there’s no way you can search the site.
I think this is a very important venture, I’ve long waited for such a magazine.
I’m also annoyed that they are using Infonet to distribute. I should tell them inworld if they don’t see this that they can break free of Infonet now. I have my own InfoNet as a result on dozens of sims, updatable from one sim location.
The script for this runs a client and server, it is made and sold by Static Sprocket. I asked him to make something like this and he did, precisely to break these monopolies like InfoNet, which has the Linden space franchise on a lease from LL.
Notecards are annoying too. But at least you can save them in inventory.
Yes, still waiting for Gutenberg to come to our world!
And no, HTML on a prim is NOT the answer. It will be bulky, laggy, not accessible to any but the most dedicated scripters and programmers who will want to tinker with it.
As noted in the post, I do think there’s a place for PDF, where something’s very design-heavy. Hunter also send along the update that part of the reason they’re publishing in PDF is because part of the magazine will be in Japanese, and it’s much easier to work with Japanese characters in PDF, apparently.
PDF locks in design and formatting— our tax forms here in the USA are available as such, as are a myriad of other documents. Heck, do PDF casting if you’re artsy. But for news? It’s not timely. I can read almost all the blogs, scan the headlines, etc in the time it takes to page down page down page down page down having to read and look through formatting.
I can’t link to an article. However, for those that will deal with PDFs, they’ll probably post a short synopsis on it, get the point across, the rest will link to THEIR site, and guess who gets the ad dollars for their traffic? Not the PDF.
I think there is a multitude of content types each with more or less suited ways of distribution. News and quickly written up personal opinions on things obviously need a fast pipeline with an easy way to respond for the readers - because this type of content is more like a discussion than actual content.
On the other hand when you have well researched articles which someone spent a week on writing and which I put expectations into accordingly as a reader, I want a good looking layout and I don’t mind pdfs for that. Many manuals of software I bought as download versions comes with PDFs. Many of the products that come on cd/dvd come with PDFs even (see music software, tiny getting started manual on paper, the main manual as PDF on the disc).
And really if I were to advertise in a business magazine I wouldn’t want to have some tiny banner there.. unless I own an online casino, porn site or a consumer business with lots of potential impulse buy products to advertise.
I like the quick and dirty format for tech stories and tech news (like twit, security now and whatnot, just plain news etc).
For a business magazines I want something that pleases the eye too, though. And dang, my slow ass machine here can handle pdfs, playing second life which moves around loads of data I can’t really complain about downloading a pdf.
Maybe it’s just me, that I prefer things to look pleasing and be easy to read. Can also print pdf pubs if i’m going to be on the road during the day. I also prefer reading printed books over reading them in crappy quality on a tiny pda screen.
Anyway, to each his own I suppose.
“Also, I’m not getting where you find that these pubs sell column inches. I think they sell by the size of the jpeg or photo no?”
Well, it’s the same thing. Your image will be a certain size — and that’s measured in column inches. It’s more of a newspaper format, I suppose. Magazines tend to do set sizes — half page, quarter page, etc.
My point is that selling by column inches or full/half/quarter page is an easy, established system for both publisher and advertiser.
Oh, and for Metaverse Messeneger’s ad rates in column inches, click here:
http://www.metaversemessenger.com/advertising/index.htm
I don’t see what’s pleasing to the eye about PDF at all. I barely get through reading Metaverse Messenger every week because of the constant need to scroll up and down and sideways and zoom and squint and try to just bring into view these columns laid out as if it were my high school newspaper circa 1974.
The giant ads also may “get your attention” with their graphic intensity and largeness but also annoy you and you can’t scroll past them.
A free tripod site with frames or columns to which some of the lead articles are merely cut and pasted in five minutes in the for-dummies template should be a definite sidekick to this PDF format for a business magainze.
These two editors are in Afghanistan and China. Could their slow or erratic connections be driving their use of PDF?
Markus said: “Maybe it’s just me, that I prefer things to look pleasing and be easy to read. Can also print pdf pubs if i’m going to be on the road during the day.”
All can be done with a Web-based publication by a good designer. For instance, hop on over to http://www.alistapart.com/articles/ and print out one of their articles.
Prokofy said: “And no, HTML on a prim is NOT the answer. It will be bulky, laggy, not accessible to any but the most dedicated scripters and programmers who will want to tinker with it.”
Is that your technical opinion? First, I’m not sure what ‘bulky’ means. Second, it will only be laggy if you’re connection is laggy as your client is connecting directly to the Web site on the prim. There might possibly be a slight delay as the page is rendered to the prim, but I can’t see it being deblilitating. Not accessible? Oh, c’mon, Prokofy now you’re just making shit up. In the preview build that had the interface for HTML-on-a-prim there was a URL field in the object properties. I’m not sure how much more simple you can get.
That said you may be right — it may not be the answer. Implementation and interface is key and those are two things LL seem to be somewhat deficient in recently.
[…] Demnächst soll für Second Life ein Ingame Magazin erscheinen. Laut 3PointD.com: SL Business magazine bills itself as “the Premiere Virtual Branding Magazine” and flags a wide range of featured content, including: RL/SL News, Getting Started, The ToolBox, Success Stories, Music, Programing, Fashion, Outlook and Investing, Law, Comics, Announcements and Contests [including writing, scripting and building contests]. Weitere Infos dazu im Folgeartikel: More on SL Biz Mag: PDF vs. Web Smackdown […]
I’m willing to bet my last linden that every single one of you will download the magazine when it’s published! Just hand ‘em over, save me the time of looking for you to collect.
[…] First of all, the navigation of the website could use some tweaking. It takes some creative clicking to finally get the PDF version of the magazine. There are some other in world versions but I have not tested those since I am not in front of a computer I can get into Second Life with. When I finally got to the PDF, (for an interesting discussion about PDF vs. Web that resulted partly from my original posting about this matter, check out the 3pointD post here.) and opened it up, my first reaction is a very favorable one. The design, layout, artwork, and everything visual is very well done. […]