SearchWiki allows users to rank and edit their Google search results.  This is a game changer for magazine publishers as we look to social media and experiences to drive new interest to our digital brands.  The future implications of how this tool could be integrated into the overall search experience as well as social media aspects and tremendous.

Google Inc. Thursday began allowing users to re-rank and edit their search results through a new set of personalization features the company hopes will make its dominant search engine more useful. - Wall Street Journal

Google:

How to use SearchWiki

Here’s how you can rank, remove, add, and comment on search results:

• Like a certain search result?

  Click to move it to the top of the page. This result will appear at the top whenever you do the same search in the future. We’ll add this marker next to it so you’ll recognize it later.

• Don’t like a result?

  Click to remove it, and it’ll remain hidden whenever you do the same search in the future.

With the announcement this week that PC Magazine will go all digital, it’s beginning to sink in to magazine publishers that their brand may indeed be stronger long term in digital formats than in just print.

Today, the PCMag Digital Network, with over seven million unique monthly visitors, reaches in excess of 10 times the circulation of the print publication. - Press Release PCMAG Digital Network

Read the rest of this entry »

As a magazine publisher, you are always seeking new stories that interest your readers.  There is an excitement that captures the scoop or the analysis of something special to your niche readership.

But there is a problem.  Even at your best, you realize that you are only covering a small percentage of the whole news associated with your niche.

Major cable news networks have already launched their own “you report” type of video reporting by their viewers.  Citizens are now bringing the front edge of news to the news media’s attention.  A new community funded reporting site is also launching (http://spot.us - launching this week according to Publishing 2.0) that will foster more of a journalistic approach to these hidden stories.

As a publisher, this should make you think more about how you involve your readership in the news and media process.  Social media for magazine publishers presents an opportunity to handle brand extension in a way the newspaper industry failed.

You are in the business of publishing media around the concept of a magazine.  The print magazine is only the periodic element citing the latest news in a packaged and polished presentation.  There is much more to your brand than just the print magazine.  Please don’t picture your business, your industry, or your own publication as being in the business of printing a magazine.

Scott Karp makes this great point with an emphasis on the newspaper business in his post on monetizing the internet.  [Well Done Again Scott!]

The magazine publishing business stands right behind the daily newsprint media in terms of volitility of digital change.  We let newspaper publishers take a bullet so that we might learn how to get our business model straight before it’s our turn to shine.