CBS Marketwatch has an interesting article re: the monthly business magazine Business 2.0. Calling it the “best magazine you’ve never read,” the author goes on to discuss why the mag might eventually replace “your father’s business magazine — Forbes — in the future:
Here’s the obligatory excerpt:
“Forbes is looking weaker and older as the years go by,” Quittner, 46, says. He dismisses it as “my father’s business magazine. They haven’t done anything to make the place look any younger, so we’re sweeping in.”
Business Week doesn’t fare any better. “I’m always flattered to see Business Week following us,” Quittner says. “I don’t see them as being anything but a supplement to us. Business Week tells you where we just were, and 2.0 tells you where we’re going.” Quittner reserves his most withering rebuke for Fast Company. “Fast Company?” he says. “Are they still around? We don’t even see them in our rearview mirror any more.” When he completed his good-natured trash talking, Quittner asked impishly, “Am I starting to sound like Muhammad Ali?”
But he’s not universally critical of his rivals. Quittner says Time Inc.’s Fortune magazine, consistently the most creative business magazine of all, “is a great role model for us. It is the pre-eminent business magazine to see the view from New York, from Wall Street. We have a Pacific Rim view.”
Fortune’s worldwide circulation is slightly north of 1 million, while 2.0 stands at about 550,000. Further, the median age of a 2.0 reader is 43, and three-quarters of them are men.
And what about Wired? Well, Quittner says he doesn’t regard Wired as direct competition for 2.0, either. Wired’s “young reader is in his low 20s,” while 2.0 caters to people in their 30s and 40s, he noted.
Interesting piece about a sometimes interesting magazine.
NOTE: IMHO, Time Warner has a hideous track record when to comes to spam, junk mail, privacy, etc. I WOULD BE VERY CIRCUMSPECT about giving them information — for example, sign up for a free “Business 2.0” and you may very well get deluged with spam and junk offers, UNLESS you go to their privacy page and then to their opt out page — even after THAT, you receive a message saying it may take a week to process.
Time Warner, like AOL, has their default set to “Now with extra Spam!” Just a heads up. (I cancelled all of my TWX magazines subs because of this — they are relentlessly obnoxious.)
Sources:
CBS MarketWatch
I just started receiving Business 2.0, so I can only base my judgement on one issue, but I think it is the best biz magazine out there. I think Fast Company is making a comeback, they were great, then sucked, and they are now getting better. I like Businessweek because they do in depth company profiles that I don’t see as much in other magazines, but I agree that they aren’t on the cutting edge. I never read Forbes, and I even find their web page confusing. Fortune is awesome, and I like that it comes every 2 weeks, that is just right for me. I’d like to see Business 2.0 move to bimonthly publication.
Doesn’t everyone have a spam only hotmail account these days?
These guys are jerks: Here’s what they sent 3 days after the subscritption, and AFTER I opted out:
Here’s what I sent back
Losers . . .