Magazine that has covered domain name industry may stop publishing.
Few publications have done as good a good job covering the domain name boom as Business 2.0. But that magazine’s future may be in jeopardy.
According to a report in Tuesday’s New York Times, Business 2.0 may close up shop with its September issue. The magazine’s ad pages are down 31.4% compared to this time last year. One possible explanation from Forbes.com:
Part of the explanation: Ad dollars that used to be spent touting new products in tech publications are being spent buying ads via sophisticated, keyword-based ad systems such as Google’s (nasdaq:GOOG) –a phenomenon that has helped power the tech industry’s resurgence. Meanwhile, fast-moving, low-overhead blogs are pushing into the territory once dominated by magazines such as the Industry Standard and Upside, and they’re sucking up many of the ad dollars that remain.
But the New York Times pointed out that Business 2.0’s demise may be more of a structural problem. The magazine’s parent Time Warner merged ad divisions with its other publications. Business 2.0 didn’t get the advertising sales rep attention that it did when it had its own salesforce.
Business 2.0’s December 2005 story “Masters of Their Domains” set off a wave of interest in domain names. A flood of people hoping to get rich quick entered the market. According to the publication, Richard Rosenblatt of MySpace fame got the idea for his company Demand Media based on that article.
This past May, Business 2.0 wrote a story about some of the domain name industry’s moguls in a cover story called “The Man Who Owns the Internet“.
I’ve been a subscriber to Business 2.0 since my favorite internet magazine, Industry Standard, folded during the tech bust. Now it might be time to find yet another cutting edge business magazine.
I started to notice Business 2.0 was getting smaller each month earlier this summer. I don’t know of another magazine that covered new business ideas and concepts so well, especially “micro businesses” that everyday entrepreneurs and moonlighters could start. The publications has covered everything from writing eBooks to Adsense arbitrage.
Hopefully someone will come to the magazine’s rescue.
David Y says
I miss the Industry Standard, too. I wish they came back.