Magtastic Blogsplosion

John Smith of Mygazines.com has sent the following response to my previous post

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for taking the time to write about Mygazines. I did however want to clear up a few misunderstandings about our site.

We will re-iterate we have every intention of working with the industry to fortify the future of magazines and the industry in general. The comparison to Napster with respect to someone driving past you with a radio on and claim that sharing, is not at all our position. We are saying, if you were to take all of the office’s in the world that purchase magazines for the sole purpose of providing entertainment for their clients, is the same as sharing. Furthermore, these offices see different people everyday, so the sharing is constant and consistent and usually includes many back dated issues as well as new. By virtue of the fact that these groups change everyday makes it like a free magazine store.

The most surprising aspect of almost every article is that they are completely missing our inactive revenue model. We have ways of drawing revenue from a number of sources, some more obvious than others. Mygazines is hardly a pirate website with the interest of breaking the industry. Rather, we offer a paradigm shift that is far more fiscally comprehensive than meets the eye and yet easily transitionable by even the biggest publishers.

The true future of the industry lies in the final stages of our site concept. We can easily transition to the final revenue model quickly with the co-operation of the publishers. We cannot however reveal the full concept at this time as we are saving that discussion for the publishing industry directly.

If our goal were to be pirates, we could have made live a number of features, including but not limited to, downloading and printing allowable to visitors and members alike.

Finally, to compare us to other similar sites with the only difference with of us being free, is to disregard the importance of the ‘mygazines’ custom magazine for users, notifications, and our full ability to share on the go, across the globe instantly.

As per our press release: We have every intention of working with the industry to provide not only revenue streams that are vast, but also an answer for the Publishers in general. Our method will increase current revenue, halt and reverse advertising revenue lost to the internet, and overcome the lack of the ability for magazines to stay current.

Mygazines sharing model is a solid one with lots of hidden potential revenue and demographics to appease all.

We can certainly continue to make our case and meet in the courts if need be. That seems to be the intention of the publishers as a whole. But ask yourself, to what end. Even if they are triumphant in this battle, they will lose the war. Apple already has a delivery system for digital reading via both the iphone and now ipod. Microsoft is also working to employ touch sensitivity to its products. Our idea would work as easily for those companies due to our concept. If we were to reveal such to those corporations, they could follow the business model and succeed without the need for working with the publishers at all. That’s all I can say at this point regarding our current revenue potential as well as the future model.

The competitiors have missed the boat. Even the sites that think they have come up with the future online version for magazines, they have not! Publisher friendly or not! There is a final stage missing that can’t be seen unless one has the freedom to think outside of the limitations of the industry as is. In doing so, we have ironically found a way to fortify the industry for all of those involved, increase jobs and magazine selection, while cutting overhead and increasing revenue dramatically for the publishers and industry as a whole.

We cannot elaborate fully as that would be tipping the hand too much. We wish to only divulge that information to the industry directly and sooner rather than later.

An hour later, John added

As well, aren’t we an interesting option for Google, Yahoo and Microsoft as the next major asset in the ads war. We can work with the industry or independently to achieve such. We prefer the former.

I’m very interested to see what John means by “the final stage missing”. I’m guessing he has a subscription model for the community in the pipeline, plus perhaps some form of contextual advertising. Digital publishing channel Texterity abandoned their subscription model recently, has found that in the consumer area, people view online as a companion to print, not a replacement, and so they give publications the option to be available for free. As the Magazine Publishers of America add their lawsuits to the pile, let’s see how this one plays out. I certainly agree with John that litigation is not the answer – even if it does succeed in closing down Mygazines.

Two interesting codas: John’s plans don’t seem to end with Mygazines for grown ups; he also owns the URL “Kidgazines.com” (as well as “urgazines.com”). And his location remains a small mystery. He tells me “Anguilla is our place of origin. This should not be considered as hiding. We are quite upfront about our place of origin on our site.” It is of course extremely easy to set up a company in Anguilla online, and there is no obligation to state detailed information about your company, its finances or its directors there. That could be a coincidence, of course, and Mr Smith may well be based there himself too. The telephone number registered for Mygazines.com, however, is in Romania. The story continues.

UPDATE: Mr Smith sent the same email to other media outlets